One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

by Mei Fong

  Students, too, are teachers, and I am very grateful to mine at USC’s Annenberg School and Shantou University for innumerable lessons. As well, thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Cathy Panagoulias and Laurie Hays for giving me my first shot at the paper and having confidence in me when I didn’t.

  Special thanks to my agents, John and Max Brockman, editor Ben Hyman, and copy editor Barbara Wood, who helped bring this book to reality in ways that I could not envision. As well, much gratitude to New America Foundation for providing support and stimulating intellectual companionship. Writing would be a lonelier business without such company.

  Last, this book is ultimately about families, and I am grateful every day for mine. My mother and sisters taught me to value strength in womanhood; my in-laws, June and Marshall, read drafts, translated, and made sure my children were fed while I was in a writing vortex; my children, whose presence reminds me of what matters most; and—I know it’s almost grounds for divorce not to mention your spouse in a writer’s acknowledgments, but I really truly, do give thanks to my husband, Andrew, who has been my shield and support in a hundred million ways.

  There are those who say too much family hinders, but it is only with such ballast that we can fly.

  Notes and References

  Author’s Note

  [>] GDP figures are “man-made”: Tom Orlik, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Chinese Statistics,” Foreign Policy, September 20, 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013s/03/20/lies-damned-lies-and-chinese-statistics/.

  Prologue

  [>] Thus began the one-child policy: There is some debate over the start of the policy, as some pilot projects were initiated in 1979; however September 25, 1980 is widely seen as the start of a nationwide plan.

  [>] “I would be surprised if more than 0.1% of this”: Interview with the author, June 13, 2014.

  [>] one out of every four people in China will be over sixty-five: Xin Dingding, “One in Four Chinese ‘Aged Above 65 by 2050,’” China Daily, May 20, 2010, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-05/20/content_9870078.htm.

  [>] China’s massive 800-million-person work force: James Tulloch, “How China’s Demographics Affect Its Workforce,” Open Knowledge, Allianz.com, April 24, 2010, http://knowledge.allianz.com/demography/population/?369/how-chinas-demographics-affect-its-workforce.

  [>] started to contract in 2012: According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, cited in numerous publications including “China’s One-Child Policy Backfires as Labor Pool Shrinks Again,” Bloomberg Business, January 20, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-20/china-s-one-child-policy-backfire-deepens-as-labor-pool-shrinks.

  [>] a tenth of eligible couples applied to have a second child: “Only 1/10th Chinese Couples Had 2nd Child After Policy Relaxed,” Press Trust of India, March 10, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/only-1-10th-chinese-couples-had-2nd-child-after-policy-relaxed-115031001049_1.html.

  [>] By 2100, China’s population may have declined to 1950 levels: Anthony Kuhn, “One County Provides Preview of China’s Looming Aging Crisis,” National Public Radio website, January 14, 2015, http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/14/377190697/one-county-provides-preview-of-chinas-looming-aging-crisis.

  [>] “Even an extra 50 to 100 million people wouldn’t have made a huge difference”: E-mail correspondence with the author, June 29, 2015.

  [>] the real number of births averted was probably 100 to 200 million at most: Wang Feng, Cai Yong, and Gu Baochang, “Population, Policy and Politics: How Will History Judge the One-Child Policy?,” Population and Development Review 38, Issue Supplement s1 (February 2013): 115–29.

  [>] ranked the one-child policy as one of the most important stratagems: “The Deepest Cuts,” Economist, September 20, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21618680-our-guide-actions-have-done-most-slow-global-warming-deepest-cuts.

  [>] the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population: United States Department of Energy, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, 2010 CO2 Emission Data, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/top2010.tot.

  [>] all governments should “adopt a one-child policy”: Charles R. Clement, “Is the World Ready for a One-Child Policy?,” Science, November 12, 2010.

  [>] “a planetary law”: Diane Francis, “The Real Inconvenient Truth,” Financial Post, December 14, 2009, http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438.

  [>] “one of the most important social policies ever”: Interview with the author, November 5, 2013. Potts later expanded on his viewpoint, saying the policy was “motivated by a sincere if mistaken belief that, difficult as it would be to implement, the one-child policy was the only way to lift people out of poverty” (e-mail correspondence with the author, August 13, 2015).

  1. After the Quake

  [>] 95 percent of couples there had pledged to have only one child: Susan Greenhalgh, Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China (Oakland: University of California Press, 2008), 202.

  [>] where over two-thirds of families are single-child families: Jianmin Wen, “Shifang, China’s First City, Exercises Family Planning, Becoming an Aging Society in Advance with Reduced Population of 400,000 in 30 Years,” Sichuan Online, January 6, 2014, http://sichuan.scol.com.cn/dwzw/content/2014-01/06/content_6713125.htm.

  [>] a license plate with the number 18: Bettina Wassener, “Vanity Plates a Perfect Match for Flashy Hong Kong,” New York Times, September 24, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/business/global/vanity-plates-a-perfect-match-for-flashy-hong-kong.html?_r=0.

  [>] about a third of the population faced strict one-child limitations: Avraham Ebenstein, “The Missing Girls of China and the Unintended Consequences of the One Child Policy,” Journal of Human Resources 45, no. 1 (2010), https: //scholars.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/avrahamebenstein/files/ebenstein_onechildpolicy_2010.pdf.

  [>] “slipping into irrelevance”: Leslie T. Chang, “For Many in China, the One-Child Policy Is Already Irrelevant,” Chinafile, March 19, 2013, http://www.chinafile .com/many-china-one-child-policy-already-irrelevant.

  [>] pension funding shortfalls could be as much as: “China Pension Fund Gap to Top 80 Pct of 2011 GDP by 2050,” Reuters, December 13, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/13/china-economy-pension-idUSL4N09N2QH20121213.

  [>] The number arrived at was 338 million: Wang Feng, Cai Yong, and Gu Baochang, “Population, Policy and Politics: How Will History Judge the One-Child Policy?”

  [>] people’s reproductive habits would roughly trend the same from the 1950s to the 1990s: Martin King Whyte, Wang Feng, and Cai Yong, “Challenging Myths About China’s One-Child Policy,” The China Journal no. 74 (2015), 1324-9347 /2015/7401-0009, Australian National University.

  [>] An estimated 13 million people share her predicament: Stephanie Gordon, “China’s Hidden Children,” The Diplomat, March 12, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/.

  [>] “like black butterflies flying low”: Zhang Qingzhou, Revelations from the Tangshan Earthquake (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2006).

  2. And the Clock Struck 8/8/08

  [>] Dr. Li pioneered a surgical technique for vasectomies: “History of No-Scalpel Vasectomy (NSV),” Weill Cornell Medical College, Department of Urology, https://www.cornellurology.com/clinical-conditions/no-scalpel-vasectomy/history/.

  [>] wide use of this sterilization technique: Bing Xu and Jinbo Zhu, “An Analysis of Sichuan Province’s Success in Promoting Male Sterilization Operation,” Chinese Journal of Family Planning, no. 5 (1993).

  [>] Fewer than 1 percent of China’s schools provide sex education: Jeremy Blum, “Babies Do Not Come from Rubbish Dumps, Chinese Sex Education Video Says,” South China Morning Post, November 7, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1350056/babies-do-not-come-rubbish-dumps-sex-education-video-says.

  [>] Huang Qi, a Chinese cyber-dissident: Michael Bristow, “China Activist Huang Qi Sentenced to Three Ye
ars,” BBC News, November 23, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8373573.stm.

  [>] Liu Shaokun, a schoolteacher, was sentenced: Tania Branigan, “Chinese Teacher Sent to Labour Camp for Earthquake Photos,” The Guardian, July 30, 2008, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/30/chinaearthquake.china.

  [>] Environmentalist Tan Zuoren, who coined the phrase “tofu dreg project”: “Chinese Earthquake Activist Tan Zuoren Released After Five-Year Prison Term,” The Guardian, March 27, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/chinese-activist-tan-zouren-released-five-year-prison-term.

  [>] been a prizewinning entry in a competition: Mei Fong, “A Deformed Doughnut? No, China’s TV Tower!,” Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2007, http://www.buro-os.com/a-deformed-doughnut-no-chinas-tv-tower/.

  [>] “how small you are, and how big the state”: Mei Fong, “CCTV Tower Mirrors Beijing’s Rising Ambitions,” Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2007, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB119438152241184281.

  [>] A multitude of mistranslated English signs: Mei Fong, “Tired of Laughter, Beijing Gets Rid of Bad Translations,” Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2007, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB117063961235897853.

  [>] The mascots were collectively dubbed fuwa: Haishan Zhang, “Lucky Dolls Become Witch Dolls, Olympic Mascot Blocked on Opening Ceremony,” Dajiyuan website, August 10, 2008, http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/8/8/11/n2224032.htm.

  [>] The Weather Modification Bureau had deployed: Zheng Yu, “Beijing Uses High-Tech to Prevent Rain from Dampening Olympic Opening,” Xinhua website, July 28, 2008, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/28/content_8787 101.htm.

  [>] They’d wanted more Yao champions: Brook Larmer, Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business and the Making of an NBA Superstar (New York: Gotham Books, 2005).

  [>] the one-child policy fostered selfishness: Klaus Brinkbäumer and Bernhard Zand, “Basketball Great Yao Ming: ‘Never Underestimate Strength of Character,’” Spiegel Online, January 23, 2014, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-former-chinese-basketball-star-yao-ming-a-944567.html.

  [>] “Olympics marked a beginning”: Peh Shing Huei, When the Party Ends: China’s Leaps and Stumbles After the Beijing Olympics (Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2013).

  [>] The quantities of water conduits and power lines: “China: 5,335 Students Killed or Missing After 2008 Quake,” CNN website, May 10, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/07/china.quake.deaths/index.html?$NMW _TRANS$=ext.

  [>] an estimated 1 million shidu parents: Beibei Bao, “Shidu: When Chinese Parents Forced to Have One Child Lose That Child,” Atlantic, May 9, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/05/shidu-when-chinese-parents-forced-to-have-one-child-lose-that-child/275691/.

  [>] shidu parents have trouble: Yuanfei Niu, “Shidu Parents Facing Problems When Getting into Nursing Home,” Dazhong Web, February 21, 2013, http://paper.dzwww.com/dzrb/content/20130221/Articel11002MT.htm; and Ke Ji and Qiong Wu, “Afraid of No Progeny to Pay Tribute at Tomb, Shidu Parents Refuse to Buy Burial Plot,” Mingzhu News, May 23, 2012, http://news.thmz.com/col89/2012/05/2012-05-231124828_2.html.

  [>] more prone to depression: Yuanfei Niu, “China Will Have 10 Million Shidu Families in Future,” Tencent Web, April 10, 2013, http://news.qq.com/a/20130410/000084.htm.

  3. Cassandra and the Rocketmen

  [>] “We could hold our heads high”: Interview with the author, August 2013.

  [>] Liang warned that the policy would be a “terrible tragedy”: Greenhalgh, Just One Child, 181.

  [>] Susan Greenhalgh: Ibid., 182.

  [>] the Chinese Association for Population Studies was founded only in 1981: Thomas Scharping, Birth Control in China, 1949–2000: Population Policy and Demographic Development (Oxford: Routledge, 2003), 51.

  [>] “only rather crude numbers”: Ibid.

  [>] “a legless man teaching running”: Saying attributed to Channing Pollock.

  [>] dazzled the Italian traveler Marco Polo: Mike Edwards, “Marco Polo, Part II: In China,” National Geographic, June 2001, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/features/world/asia/china/marco-polo-ii-text.

  [>] “There’s nine hundred million of them in the world today”: Monty Python, “I Like Chinese,” 1980.

  [>] “three are too much”: Scharping, Birth Control in China, 1949–2000, 49.

  [>] In that decade, the average woman in China went from having six children to three: According to World Bank figures.

  [>] “Economic development is like a cake”: Ted Alcorn and Bao Beibei, “China’s Fertility Policy Persists, Despite Debate,” The Lancet 378 (October 29, 2011), http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2811%29 61661-9.pdf.

  [>] “adjust women’s average fertility rate in advance”: Song Jian, “Natural Science and Social Science Scholar’s Population Study First Predicts the Domestic Population Development in the Coming One Hundred Years,” Xinhua, February 13, 1980.

  [>] aging and fertility dialed up or down, like levers on a machine: A similar analogy was employed by Susan Greenhalgh in Just One Child, 228.

  [>] “In thirty years, when our current”: Malcolm Moore, “Thirty Years of China’s One-Child Policy,” The Telegraph, September 25, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8024862/Thirty-years-of-Chinas-one-child-policy.html.

  [>] bestseller, The Population Bomb: Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb: Population Control or Race to Oblivion? (Rivercity, MA: Rivercity Press, 1975, republished from the 1968 version by special arrangement with Ballantine Books), prologue.

  [>] published The Limits to Growth: Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York: Signet Books, 1972).

  [>] many hands reaching for one loaf of bread: Ironically, Singapore today is desperately trying to raise its birthrate, which is one of the lowest in the world, through pro-natalist policies and setting up of government-sponsored matchmaking agencies. One was initially named Social Development Unit, or SDU, an unfortunate acronym that soon earned the label “Single, Desperate, and Ugly.”

  [>] rationing children: Tyrene White, China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

  [>] “He seemed like a regular guy”: Interview with the author, August 4, 2014.

  [>] Song was given access: Evan Feigenbaum, China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).

  [>] controlling China’s birthrate: Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences for a World Full of Men (New York: PublicAffairs Press, 2011).

  [>] the paper disappeared from view: Greenhalgh, Just One Child, 228.

  [>] It would be twenty long years before he was politically rehabilitated: Ma Yinchu did not live long to enjoy his new status as Father of the One-Child Policy. He died three years after the launch.

  [>] would continue to balloon: Greenhalgh, Just One Child, 218.

  [>] “How did you calculate”: From interviews and collected writings of Liang Zhongtang.

  [>] “it’s absolutely correct!”: Zhongtang Liang, “My Autobiography,” Netease (blog), August 23, 2009, http://liangzhongtang.blog.163.com/blog/static/109426508 20097230340812/.

  [>] “using science as a disguise”: Ibid.

  [>] “we have been the victors, we have mastered the world”: Song Jian and Yu Jingyuan, Population System Control (New York: China Academic Publishers, Springer-Verlag, 1988), 1.

  [>] a variety of questionable assumptions: Greenhalgh, Just One Child, 159.

  [>] “countless heroic assumptions”: Ibid.

  [>] half the rate of the previous decade: “The Most Surprising Demographic Crisis,” Economist, May 5, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18651512.

  [>] “no good theory to explain”: Matt
hew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap Press, 2010).

  [>] between 8 billion: Margaret Besheer, “UN: Global Population Expected to Top 8 Billion by 2025,” Voice of America, June 13, 2013, http://www.voanews.com/content/un-africa-to-drive-rise-in-world-population-in-2050/1681300.html.

  [>] 13 billion: Sarah Williams, “Experts Be Damned: World Population Will Continue to Rise,” Science, September 18, 2014, http://news.sciencemag.org/economics/2014/09/experts-be-damned-world-population-will-continue-rise.

  [>] as many people as there were on Earth in the 1950s: Floyd Norris, “Population Growth Forecast from the U.N. May Be Too High,” New York Times, September 20, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/business/uns-forecast-of-population-growth-may-be-too-high.html.

  [>] “science fiction”: E-mail exchange with the author, June 29, 2015.

  [>] “social, economic aspects were not factored in”: Interview with the author, August 4, 2014.

  [>] Song had risen: http://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Song_Jian/career.

  [>] “the kindness of humanity is limited”: Song and Yu, Population System Control, 2.

  [>] Yicheng and its sisters: Gu Baochang and Wang Feng, An Experiment of Eight Million People (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2009).

  [>] weren’t really representative of China: Gu Baochang, Song Jian, Liu Shuang, Wang Jinying, and Jiang Lihua, “Practice and Inspirations of Two Child Fertility Policy Areas,” Journal of Population Research 32, no. 4 (July 2008).

  [>] “it was still the same reaction”: Interview with the author, September 10, 2014.