China one child policy

China One Child Policy
State philosophy of the 1950s was that a large population gave a strong nation, so high birth rate was encouraged, as well as this during that time death rate fell due to better supply of food and medicine.
In 1959, all attention was paid to improving industry leaving no attention on farming and as a result killing 20 million in a famine.
After the famine, during the 1960s population was seen to be a problem with 55 million born every year. The result of this was the policy ‘later, longer, fewer’ encouraging people to decrease birth rate by later marriages, longer gap between children and fewer children. This did bring natural increase down from 2.1% to 1.2% however this was not enough.
This led to the introduction of the One Child Policy:
Limiting the children families could have.
Putting pressure to use contraception.
Family planning workers in every workplace.
‘Granny’ police making sure contraception was used, reported on pregnancies and if necessary enforced abortions and sterilisation.
In urban areas it was easier to enforce with rewards of good provision of education and health care however in rural areas people did not keep to the policy as strictly.
It was necessary to have the permission of council for a child, but in remote areas it was far harder to check up and therefore more unreported births.
Especially in rural areas, where much of the economy is subsistence farming, baby boys were more desirable resulting in female infanticide and baby girls ‘disappearing’.
The male dominance gave the only child ‘little emperor syndrome’ being the only child getting the attention.
In rural areas because of the poor provision of education and much of the income coming from farming, the government had to offer opportunities to generate income should they adhere to the restrictions. However the penalties for not respecting the policy included:
Cash fine or taking away livestock.
No benefits that you can gain from having one child to those with two or more.
However in some cases councils encouraged peasants to have more children as it would get them more money and in any case many people are prepared to pay the fine for another child.
Benefits of keeping to policy:
Better lifestyles are promised for the families.
Later marriages in life.
Better retirement pensions.
The mother is granted a longer maternity leave than in other countries.
Salary rise for the parents
Free education for their children.
The child gets priority for a job in the future.
Since 1990 there have been relaxations to the policy because it was so difficult to enforce and the government worrying about the impacts of an ageing population on economy.
If husband and wife are from one child families they can have two children.
Couples can have another child if first one is disabled or dies.
In the western regions, ethnic minorities able to have as many children as they like.
However even in 2001 20,000 abortions were ordered in one city alone.
Successes:
300 million births prevented.
Fertility rate down from 6 to 1.7 in 30 years.
Annual growth down to 0.6%.
Failures:
Urban rural variations has caused birth rates to be as low as 5 in Shanghai but in Tibet 23.
Potential future ageing population.
Distorted gender distribution (116 male to 100 female)
Challenges still faced:
Food security with a lot of arable land lost to urban expansion.
Water shortages, which effect over half of China’s cities.
Unemployment which is as high as 43% in some places.
Pressure on housing, transport, education and healthcare in urban areas due to mass rural to urban migration.