In 1979 led by Deng Xioping The People’s Republic of China, located in South East Asia, implanted what is called China’s one child policy or (as referred to by the Chinese government) the family planning policy. This policy restricts married, urban couples to bearing only one child and 35.9% of China’s population is subject to these restrictions, mainly those in urban areas as couples living in rural areas are allowed to have two children, especially if the first child is female or disable, as well as this ethnic minorities are exempt from the policy. However today 90% of all urban children and over 60% of rural children are growing up without any siblings.
During Mao Zedong’s rule, the policy in China was “the more people, the stronger we are” which led to extreme over population (a population verging on 1 billion during 1979/1980) and famines. However when Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, his policies concentrated on strengthening the Chinese economy and he saw China’s overpopulation as a obstruction in the way of economic development. As well as this the policy hoped to alleviate social and environmental problems (such as stretched resources in certain regions) within the country, however the primary objective of the policy was to decelerate the rate of population growth. The initial goal of the policy was to limit China’s population to 1.2 billion people by the year 2000.
Enforcing the Policy
Many of the prevailing criticisms of the One-Child Policy is that it is an abuse of Human rights, and many oppose the core principle of the policy, claiming a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
On a provincial and regional level, government agents police the situation, enforcing the regulations. Theoretically speaking, the policy is voluntary, but the government impose punishments and heavy fines on those who do not follow the rules. Parents with extra children can be fined from $370 to $12,800