Preview

PLTW

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1194 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
PLTW
Cindy Nguyen
Period 1
November 18th, 2013
Argumentative Essay: China’s One Child Policy 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. Even in modern day, many Chinese citizens still follow cultural and traditional expectations which emphasize the concepts of loyalty and responsibility for their nation and their family. Knowing this, China’s government promotes propaganda that morally enforces the people to consider their role in society by devoting themselves to being good citizens—they should follow what the government advises. Most of the propaganda the government makes encourage their citizens to have less children and at an older age to show dedication to their country. Examples of propaganda for the one-child policy include the slogans “Late, Long, and Few” and “Have Fewer, Better Children to Create Prosperity for the Next Generation” (Fitzpatrick and Rosenthal). Not only are the Chinese very loyal to their country, but they also have a strong tradition in preferring males over females. Based on their common beliefs, females tend to get married and move away with their spouse. Males are more valued in the aspects that they are the gender that abides filial piety; they are envisioned to carry on the family name and take care of their



Cited: Fitzpatrick, Laura. "China 's One-Child Policy." Time 27 July 2009: n. pag. Print. Jowett, John. "China: A Case Study." China: The One, Two, Three, Four and More Child Policy (n.d.): n. pag. Print. Pierson, David. "China 's Elderly to Grow into a Crisis." Los Angeles Times 06 July 2009: n. pag. Print. Rosenthal, Elisabeth. "Bias for Boys Leads to Sale of Baby Girls in China." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 July 2003. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.

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
  • 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
  • Powerful Essays

    English 151 Major Paper 2

    • 1994 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Potts, Malcolm. "China 's One Child Policy." Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 19 Aug. 2006. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550444/>.…

    • 1994 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful 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

    China Lost Girls

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In conclusion, this issue is bigger and bigger in China; therefore, few years later many men cannot marry because of imbalance of gender problem. And also, most families have only one child in their family so that many kids are spoiled in China.…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good 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 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
  • Better Essays

    China Research Paper

    • 6214 Words
    • 25 Pages

    China is the world’s most populated country with the population of 1.3 billion people. Since there were so many people in China they had to think about a way to control population so this is where the one-child policy was made. It officially restricts married, urban couples to having only one child, while allowing exemptions for several cases, including twins. This policy was introduced in 1978 and initially applied to first-born children from 1979. The policy is enforced at the local level through fines that are imposed based on the income of the family and other factors.…

    • 6214 Words
    • 25 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is true that there are a lot of males doing labor work but there is over 50 million more males than females in China. This is an unhealthy gender ratio as it is not suppose to happen. For every 100 females there are 116 males that are born in China. In the world’s average for every 100 female there are 105 males that are born. An overwhelmingly majority of family want to have boys; because boys provide labor, money making potential, and a namesake for the family. A good amount of infant children, majority girls, are abandoned or even killed after they are born. Many female children of China are adopted from the U.S. any other countries. The unbalance of males to female is also a problem because there would be fewer females for marriages. Men will have a more difficult time to find someone who will bear their child. “Traditionally, male children (especially firstborn) have been preferred—particularly in rural areas—as sons inherit the family name and property and are responsible for the care of elderly parents.” (Kenneth Pletcher, University of…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Asian and Asian American culture are historically known for having a strict, distinctive boundary between the traditional roles of women and men, where, in the domestic sphere, women are submissive to male authority figures, which are typically embodied in the father or husband. One well known example that calls to mind this subordination of women to men is China’s one-child policy, which often leads to ill treatment, abandonment or leaving up for adoption of female infants and children as a result of wanting a male child to lead the family and carry on the family name. While this might be a more extreme result of this stereotype, there are many other similar historical stereotypes that subordinate the woman to the man in Asian and Asian American culture. Regardless of historical stereotypes, however, it is clear to many individuals today that times are changing and causing culture to…

    • 2063 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    China Outline

    • 3011 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Casey, J., & Koleski, K. (2011). Backgrounder: China 's 12th Five-Year Plan. U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission.…

    • 3011 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    One Child Policy

    • 2942 Words
    • 12 Pages

    When one thinks of China it is common to conjure up images of rice fields and of the great wall, but also of crowded cities teeming with people and bicycles and cars. One rarely thinks of a nation populated mostly by men and boys, with a noticeable yet surreal absence of women. While this is a bit of an exaggeration, it has been noted over the past several decades that there is an alarmingly imbalanced sex-ratio. The policy has clearly contributed to the nation’s unnatural gender imbalance, as couples use legal and illegal means to ensure that their only child is a son. There are 117 men to each 100 women in China (Goodkind, 2004). In the 1979, when the one-child policy was enacted, the intention was not to create this imbalance, but to control the population of a rapidly growing nation. Unfortunately the one-child policy as it stands, illustrates a cultural favoritism toward males, and degradation of women to a lower social status in which they have little control of their reproductive rights.…

    • 2942 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Social Ecology

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages

    10. Yang, J., (2007). Local Variations of the One-Child Policy and Adolescent China. Journal of Population Studies.…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics