Chinas New One Child Policy - Essay Example

China’s New One Child Policy From 1949 t0 1972 China’s population rose from 540 million to more than 800 million prompting the Chinese government to adopt a one child policy in order to control population growth. The law went into effect in 1979. In the following thirty years the Chinese population grew to 1.2 billion, now 1.4 billion, a factor of nearly 10% less than the previous growth. So, the one child policy is indeed working, but some unexpected side effects have caused the Chinese government to rethink that policy. One particularly worrisome result is a 13% differential in female to male children in China, which portends a future social problem for China’s fragile hot growth economy. Two studies both show that the One Child Policy is responsible for the deficit of female children as it encourages gender selection of children in utero via ultrasound and abortion, neglect of female children, and infanticide of female offspring (Bulte, Heerink, and Zhang 21-39; Ebenstein 87-115). Ultrasound selection of foetuses is not legal, but the cultural bias is so strong in favour of male children that people break this law. The OCP has been criticized since its inception as being against human rights, barbaric and totalitarian (Tan 44-54). The question of human rights is a matter of perspective. Deciding what rights of which humans is the major problem. Everything any person does on this planet has an effect elsewhere, because we are interconnected in so many ways. While one can acknowledge that the actions of one single person makes no real difference, the individual actions of one person multiplied by a multi-millions has considerable effect. If we pick any environmental or economic problem the influence of the actions of a a few million people, each doing one small damaging thing, is huge. The basic ideology of the PRC is based upon the protection of the rights of the group versus the rights of the individual. Barbaric is certainly not the correct adjective, since barbarians are uncivilized and would not have such laws nor care much about the group. Totalitarian does apply in some ways. China’s political system is an elitist multilevel democracy, but the power at the top is absolute. However, even those at the top need the support and good will of the people. Most of the time the Chinese government machinery works well, but no government would be functional with a large faction of this huge population unhappy. People in China respect visible authority, and obey it, but if a law is considered unjust and not useful then a large proportion of the people will ignore it whenever authority is not visible. There are simply too many people for any unpopular law to be enforced. It is also true that one must be a member of the Communist Party in order to become a leader, and one must be invited to join the party (Sato and Eto 653-672). That is part of the elitist government structure, as only influential and well educated people are invited to join the Communist Party. To rise to the upper levels of government, one must be well educated and liked ("Political Structure." 28-28). That the population growth has slowed by such a ratio shows, therefore, that the people have been obeying this law, and that means that it has, at least, tacit approval. However, there are problems: there is gender imbalance in the young population, there are not enough young people to support the aging population, there is still a need for skilled labor and this will increase with the retirement of the current generation of managers, and with a 13% difference between males and females, young men will have trouble finding a suitable mate (Beech, Yongqiang, and Jiang 36). Education is one of the major problems caused by such gender imbalance. It is a status symbol in China and a dividing line within the culture. Few marriages take place between one person with post-secondary education and one without, and even fewer succeed. Education is a central social pillar of this society. If a family has only one child in which to invest the future then they put all resources of the entire extended family at the disposal of that child. This means that families that have the means will pool their resources in order to insure the best possible education for that child (Tan 44-54). This encourages the development of elite private schools, because people will pay for them. The other type of private schools develop to fill the needs of the unplanned and illegitimate children. This can get very expensive if college is an aim. This means the child must attend an expensive private trade school or college or go abroad for education. In urban areas, under the previous OCP the parents were able to get a Hu Kou, a residential permit, which guarantees services to the holder, including free grade 1-9 education for one child. A second child could cost more than a month’s wages every year, since they had to pay for school, medicine, and other rights and benefits to legal residents. Then when the child is grown that child needs to seek employment with an employer that will get them a Hu Kou or that cannot work (Anderson and Teng 607-629). These policies were created to keep the already over-crowded cities from being inundated with unskilled laborers flooding in from the countryside looking for work. The gender imbalance will cause young men to seek foreign wives or many will simply never marry or reproduce. It may also have an effect upon the longevity of marriages, especially wher both people are only children. They can have two children, but maybe supporting them will be a problem. The population of young people will get even lower, while the populations of elders will rise. With so few supporting so many the standard of living for all will go down, as children cannot provide well for their parents and grandparents and they will also not have as much for their own children. It is traditional for whole families to cooperate for the good of all, but with so many small families there are simply not enough higher earning educated people to pay for the previous and the next generation (Beech, Yongqiang, and Jiang 36). Finally, after more than three decades, China will ease the one child policy, allowing couples with one person being an only child to have two children, instead of requiring that both be only children (Beech 1-1; Tan 44-54). Many couples are happy about this, but almost a third say they want only one child, due to the huge cost involved in raising each child (Anderson and Teng 607-629).Many who want another child say it is because they want to lighten their children’s burden of caring for elders when they enter the labor market. In addition, two children could help each other, keep each other company and not be lonely. Many families say they do not want a second child, because it is too expensive. They will spend years just caring for one and it will take all of their resources. Caring for two would be a very heavy burden, and both children would have much less. Maybe they could barely pay for school, and buying a home for a boy so that a good woman would marry him would take everything that have (Bulte, Heerink, and Zhang 21-39). In spite of all these reasons most people believe that should have the choice. There are many critics who say that this move to loosen the one child policy is too little too late. It will take more than a generation to balance the genders and the ratio of elders to youth, even if every family allowed multiple children exercises their right. It is much easier to prevent more children than to promote them, and the best the government can do is to encourage more families to have two children with benefits and rewards. However, finding the funds to do this is another problem. While the Chinese government is by no means broke, most of the money is tied up in current projects, foreign currency (especially US dollars) and supporting the economic growth through government owned enterprises (Zhao 802-817). In addition to a rather fragile cash flow structure, the banking system is more politically correct than globally efficient (Baradwaj, Flaherty, and Li 56-75). China’s dual policy of maintaining a socialist society, and insuring that money does trickle down to even the poorest, while also propping up government institutions has an almost schizophrenic character about it. China wants to support the growth of its economy, especially capitalism with a Chinese slant, while also insuring equality and bolstering up its social system (Saporito and Ramzy 34-39). At the same time, China’s economy has been on a long and strong growth pathway, but it is artificially supported by the government (Baradwaj, Flaherty, and Li 56-75)t. There is a question of its sustainability in light of the strange mixture of socialism and capitalism. Will the government be able to continue this support indefinitely? If not, what will happen to the economy when the support is not enough? A case in point is the artificial stability of the Chines Renminbi. If the Yuan were allowed to float, would that bring disaster? The Chinese government believes so, as it continues to defend the Yuan (OLeary 22). Only time will answer these questions, since China is really the first political structure and country of its kind. It is impossible to know what will happen if any of the aforementioned scenarios should occur. It is certain only that things will change. China has a strong ideology supported by a group-centric culture. The Chinese government is largely respected, though there is certainly discernable dissent. The leaders in China are mostly very sincere patriots, but they are also human, and that means they make mistakes. So far the country has survived some very notable mistakes, such as the Cultural Revolution. However, there may come a day when China will need help from the rest of the world. Whether or not other countries want to help, they will have to help in order to maintain international stability. China is a part of the global economy, and as the second most powerful economic force, it had great influence on international markets. Just as the recession in the United States echoed around the world after the housing crisis, any such large problems in the Chinese economy with have strong ripples. Hopefully the combination of growth and population balance will stabilize the Chinese economy when the current older workers retire. Only time will tell. Works Cited "Political Structure." Country Report.China.2 (2012): 28-. Print. Anderson, Gordon, and Wah Leo Teng. "Child Poverty, Investment in Children and Generational Mobility: The Short and Long Term Wellbeing of Children in Urban China After the One Child Policy." Review of Income & Wealth 55 (2009): 607-29. Print. Baradwaj, Babu G., Susan Flaherty, and Joanne Li. "Are Chinese Banks Positioned to Compete in the Post-WTO Environment?" Chinese Economy 41.2 (2008): 56-75. Print. Beech, Hannah. "China Loosens its One-Child Policy." 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International Education 42.1 (2012): 44-54. Print. Zhao, Shuming. "Application of Human Capital Theory in China in the Context of the Knowledge Economy." International Journal of Human Resource Management 19.5 (2008): 802-17. Print.   Read More