One Child Policy in Chinese Novels set in Modern Times

Yah, lots of the common people that worked in the city sent their second/first child back to the country side for their grandparents to raise.
It is what it is. I am not really looking down on China's actions, cause if I did, I would be a hypocrite about abortion here in America. It's similar results, just done by different means. One is Imperial Law, the other is freedom of choice.

 

I don't get it. How can forced abortion be compared with abortion by choice?

 

I had a friend from China who had a little sister. He told me it wasn't outright illegal, but they had to pay a fine.

 

One child policy IS in effect. But several changes have been made.
One being. A married couple CAN have 2 kids as long as both of them are the only child. Otherwise its a fine.
Also. Different rules apply to rural villages it seems.
I dont know how the rules go for a married couple of a local and foreigner

 

From what I know of before, if the first child is female you are allowed a second chance for a male in some places. My aunt was this case, she had a girl then a boy. If both are girls then it's a rip. But there was a worry going around about not enough girls since a lot of parents were aborting their child if they found out it was a girl to try again for a boy when they could only have one child.

We're from Fujian. I guess our area is kinda rural? Last time I was there was 15 years ago... there wasn't any major roads running through from what I remember. Probably changed by now

 

Technically both are by choice(in this case), just the pressure from society differs.

 

Minority nationalitiesdh，foreigner and some rural areas do not apply the one child policy.

 

AFAIK the "one-child policy" has been gravely misunderstood since I often see in non-chinese fiction situations that are contradictory with it. Two of is most notable exceptions were "multiple births" (in case of more than one child being born, the family gets to keep all of them) and "first child is a girl" (applicable only to the countryside), in which if the first child born was a girl, the family is allowed one retry, keeping the girl.
To that, you have to add on one hand Taiwan (they do not follow mainland China's government, so their laws don't apply) and recently annexed and retrieved lands (Hong Kong, for example, has families with several children, provided that all of them were born prior to 1999).

The last update, though I have forgotten the exact terms, is the allowance of a retry to city dwellers, most likely in hopes to stop having a mostly male official population which not only makes the population decline faster than they expected and even faster than they wanted, it has led to a lot of sexual related crimes (like "buy a wife" bussiness, of which at least some seem to abduct young women to sell to their clients). What I don't know is if the retry is the same already in place for the countryside or if it's more universal (allowance of a second birth even if the first one was male).

 

In china, the law just says one child. The individual parent is the one choosing to have a male child. They are not forced to abort the female child.
Both abortions = the death of a (potential?) child.
In America, by law, in some places, you are required to pay taxes to fund abortion clinics, even if it is against your morals/religious beliefs. (If you pay for someone to kill your wife, but don't directly kill her, are you not still responsible...)

 

Firstly, many families are forced by law to do the abortion(s), regardless of the gender of the child, because most families are not able to get that information since it's illegal.
Secondly, Social pressure from families, friends are different from threats of losing your job, unable to enroll your kid into a school, and unable to get social security. Yes, the execution differs in different areas and at different times, and there are exceptions. But more often than not it's not solvable by money/power because most people do not have money nor power, nor can they choose to be in an area where it's not strictly carried out.
Lastly, there are more than enough cases of forced abortions, where the woman was seized and sent to the hospital without anyone's consent, or government workers going into family houses to check if there were pregnant woman, which forced them to hide in the wilds. In more than one cases, those actions caused the woman's life.

Whether women have the freewill to choose how many kids to have under social pressure is a different issue. FORCED one child policy execution is at the same level as raping a woman till she delivers a child for you. Ironically, many politicians care about neither of them.

 

My mistake then as I thought the forced abortions had been outlawed over a decade ago, I guess it just shows how much of a mess it is to enforce anything in such a big country if there is a lack of effort.

 

Yes, it is a very complex issue and nasty one at that. @lollideath
I personally could care less about all the specific laws, social excuses, when the bottom line is the murder of a child.
If I accept one country's justification on murder, then I am a hypocrite if I don't accept a different country with different moral and cultural values.

You are judging China's moral and cultural differences based upon your own. You think they're justification for abortion is wrong, but ours is correct? Western and Eastern culture's have very different roots found in religion and political structures.

4 Example: Lowering population was necessary for their country to survive. It went to far, but they are correcting it. Its better than them going to war and killing all the people in countries around them to make up the resources needed for their (hypothetical)expanded population w/o 1 child policy? (Like most wars are over resources... even holy crusades are for wealth, overpopulation needing to take over resources... are those justifiable?) (China puts lots more emphasis on control, survival of their way of life... that's why throughout known history, they are the only country that hasn't been conquored by outsiders)

Or you can look at it from the life that never was born.
You could say that an unborn child doesn't have a choice and death is a FORCED decision from higher powers...(the mother or the government, take ur pick). Where is the child's rights and freedom of choice? Or the man's. Conceptually, the unborn child is half his, but he doesn't have an rights or choice weather or not the child is born?
If he wants the child, and she doesn't, whats a couple of months to give birth and sign away the right of being a parent to the father, in comparison to a life?

No easy answer for this. But each person has their own morals, and thinks they are right. I lean towards murder and sin, you lean towards woman's rights, and China leans towards pragmatic survival... or something more descriptive.

I look down from a lofty higher moral position on current day America's abortion policies, as you look down form a lofty higher moral position on current day China 1 child policy.
And China looks down from a lofty higher logical mentality upon stupid westerners.

One of the main reasons why the world doesn't like America, even if we promote peace, are generous with wealth and technology, and the world is probably better for it, is that we Force our ideals, culture, and morals, (and PC) down other countries throats who want to be who they are. Globalization sucks balls... 20 years ago, different cities in America all had their unique vibe and small businesses. Now, every dam city is the same with Mcdonalds, Tacobell, Wallmart..etc... its a micro view on whats happening to the world.

 

What resource does china lack? I still don't quite understand.

 

If china becomes over populated, (not having 1 child law) then water, food are the obvious resources that would run out.
There is a reason why china adopted the 1 child policy, to decrease population.
I'm sure there was also economic aspects to it as well, but that is part of survival.

A current example I guess would be California's water shortage.
California buys water from other states. But other states are starting to get a big enough population that they cant sell enough water to california without damaging their own state.
So, Californians will continue to increase population, illegal immagrants will continue to add more and more millions every year(whatever the right number is), other americans will travel to the golden state to make it big in hollywood...
So, how do you solve the water shortage?
Can't buy enough, can't make it rain, can't stop illegal immagrants because its PC?
Can't stop people having children. Can't change Catholic culture that encourages large families. Can't stop crooked politians buying up water rights and supplying it for a premium to rich people.... Can't stop farmers from needing it to supply United states with like 60% of all non-grain produce...

@1amdude This is all hypothetical if China became overpopulated because they did not use the 1 child policy to control their population growth.

 

It just doesn't hit me. how does reducing future workforce reduce resource consumption? It just gonna hurt in the long term.

I can only see that their government just wanna f*** people up.

 

Less people = less consumers = less resource consumption.
More workforce = more resource consumption to create goods.
More consumers = more resource consumption via demand to create new goods.

If one million people drink a gallon of water a day to survive, or 10 million people drink a gallon of water a day to survive, but there are only 8 million gallons of water available, 2 million will not have enough water to drink.

Historically what happens to a country that doesn't have enough food and water and wealth for the poor? Civil unrest, leading to terrorism, militants, resitance groups etc... So some leader gets the big Idea to keep his country together by starting a war against another country to loot, pillage, take over new land, water, food, wealth....

Overpopulation leads to many problems. Lack of resources. Health and safety. Wealth availability. Crime and Judicial. Land availability.

 

I see your point.

Solution for a mean? either way, when people wanna breed, they breed. Its a bit sad that it look like an exploitation. Poor people don't have many ways to entertain themselves.

well, to each their own.

 

Problem is you end up with a disproportionally large elderly population if you simply start enforcing birth control while the previous generations are still alive.
The median age in china is roughly the same as the in US despite having a much lower average income to support it.

 

Yah, I am not denying that China went to far, or underestimated the reactions of their population. It was also discussed how they have responded and made changes to keep it from getting worse.
That was discussed in earlier posts. This was more a quick explanation to the above conversations about abortion more than anything else

 

if its born outside marriage, where does the responsibility toward the children lies? should the mother be the one to pay? man I wish i can read chinese so that I can look this all up.this policy just scream "chaos" somehow.