Preview

China's One-Child Policy Essay

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2538 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
China's One-Child Policy Essay
THE WORLD’S MOST SEVERE FAMILY PROGRAMME or THE HIGH PRICE OF A LOWER POPULATION

When we think about China the things that click in our heads are most probably the great blend of history, culture, and modernity, as well as the gleaming sky scrapers, thousands of factories and their recent economic boom. Along with that, a really memorable thing is that today, China 's population is 1,343,239,923 (according to CIA World Factbook), making it the largest of any country in the world. The size of china’s population is both the country 's greatest weakness and strength. China is one of the few contemporary countries whose National Government implemented an antinatalist policy. The so-called ‘’One-Child policy’’ is brutally simple: have one child or face the consequences.
The policy’s background is deeply enrooted in the Chinese history and their family values. Before 1949, when the Communist party came to power after a
…show more content…
After a few years, the policy’s problems became evidence that were ignored. Facing increasing pressure, officials began resorting to new strategies to meet strict birth quotas. Arrest statement was released, mandating cadres to carry out any policy advantageous to the one child policy. Many of these policies were efficient, but devastatingly brutal. One of the most prude and widely employed tactics used by officials were forced abortions were tragically employed on a massive scale to decrease population growth. No one was free from the clutches of abortion. Under the euphemism of technical measures, doctors really hesitated to abort. It was widely known that a woman facing imminent labor could still be forced into a last minute abortion. There was little hope for those who attempted to resist. In 1982 the policy’s coercion picked ad officials frantic to meet the party quotas and policy requirements resorted to brute

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    China’s population has increased since 1950 which caused millions to die due to food shortages. To control how many children Chinese people can have, they had to input a policy to decrease the number of children. This policy was an excellent idea for China because it decreased population, made exceptional environment, and more opportunities for the only child.…

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Put yourself in other people’s shoes. The year is 1980. You just had your 2nd child. You are so excited to see your daughter/son go to school for the very first time, but wait. Everyone is talking about something called “China’s One Child Policy”. You are confused until you find out what it means. The 2nd child that you just had, can’t receive barely any benefits. According to (Document E), “The Costs and who is not allowed to enroll in school or to access the healthcare system.”. Isn’t that just terrible? If your child has something life-threatening wrong with he/she, he/she cannot treat it because of them being the 2nd child. Your child could die because of this policy. Just think about that.…

    • 123 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most people want to have more than one child,well that doesn't happen in China.When Mao Zedong took power in 1949 he encouraged the people of China to have more children.Then in 1980 he enforced the one child policy due to a severe overpopulation (BGE).The one child policy was a bad idea for three reasons,it was unnecessary,it hurts the elderly and retirees, and it has a negative impact on women.…

    • 295 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “Newly released data from China’s 1990 census support previous suspicions that 5 percent of all infant girls born in China are unaccounted for. It is not clear what has happened to them. Are they killed at birth, drowned in a bucket of water by the midwife, on instructions from parents who want a son rather than a daughter? Or are they given up for adoption? Or perhaps they are raised secretly to evade the one-child policy? Some evidence suggests a combination of these factors accounts for the missing girls, although officials usually insist that very few are killed” (Women’s International Network News). This is the current situation in China, the most populated country in the world. With more than one billion inhabitants, the government has installed a one-child policy to stop overpopulation from damaging…

    • 2608 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Could you imagine your leader making up rules about your family? It seems impossible and inhumane, but this is exactly what they are doing in China. China implemented a “one child policy” in the late 1970s in response to a growing crisis created by rapidly exploding population growth (Piper). Essentially the one child policy is not a law but enforced with punishments. This policy allows families to only have one child. Of course in every policy comes something good and something bad.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ever wonder if the one-child policy worked out in china? China's population was increasing too fast, almost to one billion. The communist party feared china's population and created a policy named The One-Child Policy that started in 1980. Now we discuss if this policy was a good idea for china or not. More evidence has been found in the documents about this policy not being a great idea afterall. The population still has been growing because of exceptions. Female babies have been killed because at the time a male babies were wanted more than a female baby. Also, some children without a sibling show social issues with parents. More evidence will be stated on why the One-Child policy was not effective.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the documentary, China’s Lost Girls directed by Allan Myers, it goe into China’s One Child Policy. On of the major topics this documentary is the Social Structure of China and how this policy will affect it in the long run. To begin, China’s social structure and culture compared to ours, here in the United States, is far different. China’s culture places more value on men than they do women. Because of that, there is more pressure on the women to help please the needs of the man. Though because of this inconsistency of value between…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    PLTW

    • 1194 Words
    • 5 Pages

    What is the cost to solve one problem? In 1979, Deng Xiaoping introduces China’s one-child policy with the hopes to slow down their population and assist in improving their living circumstances (Pierson). China has always been considered as the largest country in the world. Because of their vast population, they are at risk of overpopulation and not having enough resources to sustain their people. While it may be true that China’s one-child policy provides some benefits in establishing a better overall society, it is only temporary. China’s one-child policy has negative long-term direct and indirect impacts on their citizens through the way their policy pressures traditional and cultural factors, and creates economical and social problems for their aging population.…

    • 1194 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    One Child Policy DBQ

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In 1949, Mao Zedong governed China from nineteen forty nine to nineteen seventy six. Chinas population was poor at the time and the government was running out of ways to help chinas economy fix itself. China was in a dire need for a change. So Mao decided that he would encourage families to have more and more children. His logic was that the more people birthed would mean more workers to work on farms, ensuing a stronger China. He wanted China to thrive and surpass the richer nations. Mao did not realize this at the time but China was about to become one of the most overpopulated countries to exist. After he helped China get on its feet he decided to make a drastic change called the Great Leap Forward. The goal of the Great Leap Forward was to change China from a lush traditional country to a hard, steel producing nation. This recoiled on him and his people started starving because China was not importing enough food to support the growing population, causing thirty million deaths. He needed to fix this problem and fast. His solution was to slow down the growing birth rate with the slogan “Late, long, and few.” The idea behind the slogan was for couples to marry late and have few children. After this, the fertility rate in China was cut in half in only nine years. This decrease in fertility rate did not settle well with the government so the Chinese government implemented the -one-child policy to further decrease the fertility rate. The one-child policy was a policy that banned the Han Chinese, which makes up 90% of Chinas population, from having more than one child. (Background Essay.) Despite the harsh measures it took to put the one-child policy in place, research has shown that the policy has boosted the self esteem of children and saved the environment by increasing the water amount per capita.…

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “In order to stabilize the world’s population,” wrote Jacques Yves Cousteau “350,000 must be eliminated per day.” This powerfully haunting statement has been regulated and reinforced in China, by their government, since 1979. Although Chinese officials don’t eradicate nearly even a quarter as many lives daily, their One Child Law does put a reasonable dent into the lives that are brought into the world we live in. China’s law, as cold and cruel as it may seem to some, does serve a definitive purpose; to control their population.…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In today’s society, China’s population was put into consideration by their government. They decided that each couple were to have only one child each. This was established as the one-child policy. Both situations were initiated to maintain their population. Also, it is stated that some families did not obey this regulation and had more than one child.…

    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagine a world where one can’t just simply go to the supermarket because there is not enough food. A world where pollution is a daily reality, the air too thick to even breath and the water virtually undrinkable. A place you can no longer buy consumer goods because there isn’t enough materials to make them. This could become a reality, but preventing it has always been on the minds of the Chinese government. War and epidemics had struck China for years, but after the founding of the People's Republic of China, sanitation and medicine improved and prompted rapid population growth. This combined with the movement created by Mao Zedong, China’s previous communist leader, led to rapid population growth that gave China’s monumental population. This monumental mistake took its toll in the food supply when Mao emphasized steel production over farming, food supply slipped behind population growth; by 1962 a massive famine had caused some 30 million deaths. After the population leveled off, the government continued the camping to reduce China’s population. In 1979 the Chinese government introduced a policy requiring couples from China's ethnic Han majority to have only one child. Depending on where they lived parents can be fined thousand of dollars for having an extra child without a permit and can be forced to abort the child and then be sterilized. With all this in mind I not only believe that the one child policy with some adjustments can be a good solution to the overpopulation and issues related to it but also it is a necessary policy. With changes to the policy will greatly improve China’s people living environment and standards. Without this policy we can face serious issues concerning food supplies, depletion of natural resources at a rapid rate, poverty,spreading of diseases due to lack of proper medical care, overcrowded cities that can lead to heavy pollution, inadequate housing, lower life expectancy and higher death rates,…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Molly Zhang, a 31-year-old account manager in the lighting industry, just had her second son. Now she has to pay a fine likely to total 30,000 yuan ($4,760), roughly equal to her annual salary, for violating China's one-child policy.” This is the harsh reality of people in china that are choosing to have more children without falling into the criteria China’s government has set to allow having more children. Such as ethnic minorities, who have always been able to have more than one child. For example in the event that a farming family has a girl for their first child, they are permitted to have a second child. These inconsistencies in the policy is why many have been calling for its abolishment from the beginning. (Roberts,…

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    China began its one child policy in 1979 by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The policy’s purpose was to monitor and limit the booming population’s growth. This policy began as a “temporary measure,” that once stabilization took place, the policy would ease up on its strictness and its tight grip on the people. And yet still today parts of China continue this policy. This policy allows only one child per couple. Law enforcers made sure that women who attempted a second pregnancy were fined, punished, and pressured to abort and then sterilize. The lesser population could very well mean that there are more resources left for those alive, but less workers to produce these products in the long run. Although the standard of living would increase because of a lesser population, the restrictions are strict, inhumane, cruel, unnecessary, unlawful, and other nations should not adopt this technique.…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since the Industrial Revolution, when the standard of living increased significantly, there has been rapid population growth. Many countries, including the United States, have enough land and resources in order to comfortably support the growing population. Some countries, however, simply have more people than can be comfortably supported—like China. China’s population—a staggering 1.3 billion people—accounts for about 20% of the world’s population, housed in a relatively small space! Because of that, during the 1970’s, China implemented measures to limit their population—most famously the One-Child Policy. The One-Child policy, in simplest terms, limited each family to having only one child. However, there were many exceptions to this policy. Additionally, there were other, more sinister methods used to control the population. While China’s population control methods were effective at limiting the population, policies like the One-Child Policy caused societal issues, led to higher rates of sex-selected abortions and infanticide and violated human rights principles.…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics