by Mei Fong
[>] “He was treated like a god”: Interview with the author, September 10, 2014.
[>] Too Many People in China?: Liang Jianzhang and Li Jiangxin, Too Many People in China? (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2012).
[>] China had become “like an armored car”: Interview with the author, August 20, 2013.
[>] officials caught her: Hannah Beech, “China: Forced-Abortion Victim Promised $11,200, but Family Fears for Life,” Time, July 13, 2012, http://world.time.com/2012/07/13/china-forced-abortion-victim-awarded-11200-fears-for-life/.
[>] “I could feel the baby jumping around inside me”: Malcolm Moore, “China ‘Forced Abortion’ Photograph Causes Outrage,” The Telegraph, June 14, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9331232/China-forced-abortion-photograph-causes-outrage.html.
[>] Stanford anthropology student Steve Mosher personally witnessed several: Steven W. Mosher, Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese (New York: Free Press, 1984).
[>] “Chinese women have made huge sacrifices”: Frank Langfitt, “After a Forced Abortion, a Roaring Debate in China,” National Public Radio website, July 5, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/07/05/156211106/after-a-forced-abortion-a-roaring-debate-in-china.
[>] a new baby boom: Sui-Lee Wee, “Investors Look to Nappies, Pianos as China Drops One Child Policy,” Independent, November 20, 2013, http://www.inde pendent.ie/business/world/investors-look-to-nappies-pianos-as-china-drops-one-child-policy-29768127.html.
[>] Shares at Japanese diaper maker: Danielle Demetriou, “Japanese Companies Relish China’s One-Child Policy Reform,” The National, January 14, 2014, http://www.thenational.ae/business/industry-insights/economics/japanese-companies-relish-chinas-one-child-policy-reform.
[>] the baby boom’s been a bust: Shan Juan, “Fewer Couples Want Second Child,” China Daily, October 30, 2014, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-10/30/content_18825388.htm?utm_source=The+Sinocism+China+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1d33689d9e-Sinocism10_30_1410_30_2014&utm _medium=email&utm_term=0_171f237867-1d33689d9e-29619965&mc_cid =1d33689d9e&mc_eid=a85f130e96. Shan Juan, “Fewer Couples Want Second Child,” China Daily, October 30, 2014, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-10/30/content_18825388.htm?utm_source=The+Sinocism+China+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1d33689d9e-Sinocism10_30_1410_30_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_171f237867-1d33689d9e-29619965&mc_cid=1d33689d9e&mc_eid=a85f130e96.
4. The Population Police
[>] a bloated behemoth: Scharping, Birth Control in China, 1949–2000, 164.
[>] births must be spaced at least five years apart: Ma Shipeng, “Despite Two-Child Policy in Yicheng, Villagers Prefer to Have Second Child, Financially Better Off,” Dong Fang Zao Bao, November 12, 2013, http://epaper.dfdaily.com/dfzb/html/2013-11/12/content_834806.htm.
[>] Nonpermanent barrier methods like condoms, the Pill, and IUDs: Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Boston: South End Press, 1999), 164.
[>] China sterilized over 20 million people: China Health Statistics Yearbook (Beijing: Peking Union Medical College Press, 2010).
[>] marched off in handcuffs: Scharping, Birth Control in China, 1949–2000, 55.
[>] “just a piece of meat”: Cheng Xiaowei and Zhao Yejiao, “Fine Determined by Personal Discretion, Said Wenzhou Family Planning Official,” China News, April 8, 2010, http://www.chinanews.com/sh/news/2010/04-08/2213437.shtml.
[>] a “crisis in birth planning”: Scharping, Birth Control in China, 1949–2000, 72.
[>] had already breached population targets: Ibid., 73.
[>] publicly pee in cups: Ibid., 176.
[>] “The doctor injected poison”: “Forced Abortion and Sterilization in China: The View from Inside,” hearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations, US House of Representatives, 105th Cong. (June 10, 1998), http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa49740.000/hfa49740_0f.htm.
[>] wanted for suspected fraud: Daniel Kwan, “Birth Control Couple Accused of Swindles,” South China Morning Post, July 1, 1998, http://www.scmp.com/article/246563/birth-control-couple-accused-swindles.
[>] harsh enforcement of the one-child policy to be rare: “Flap over 1-Child Policy Stirs,” Washington Times, February 18, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/18/revival-of-us-aid-stirs-unease-on-beijings-one-chi/?page=all.
[>] turn enforcers into parenting counselors: “Enforcing with a Smile,” Economist, January 10, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/china/21638131-enforcers-chinas-one-child-policy-are-trying-new-gentler-approach-enforcing-smile.
[>] a mass sterilization campaign: Amnesty International, “China: Thousands at Risk of Forced Sterilization,” April 20, 2010, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/016/2010/en/.
[>] “‘Big cities depend on land’”: Pang Jiaoming, The Orphans of Shao: A True Account of the Blood and Tears of the One-Child Policy in China (New York: Women’s Rights in China Organization Publishers, 2014), 60.
[>] an estimated 13 million people: Gao Haoliang, Wang Haiying, and Wu Shuguang, “Illegally Born Children Could Register Without Fine,” Banyuetan Magazine, June 3, 2014, http://www.banyuetan.org/chcontent/jrt/2014531/102874.html.
[>] Beijing began a crackdown on human rights lawyers: Andrew Jacobs and Chris Buckley, “China Targeting Rights Lawyers in a Crackdown,” New York Times, July 22, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/world/asia/china-crackdown-human-rights-lawyers.html?_r=0.
[>] fifteen out of a hundred students recognized the photo: Robin Young and Jeremy Hudson, “How the Tiananmen Square Massacre Has Been Largely Forgotten,” National Public Radio website, June 4, 2014, http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/06/04/tiananmen-louisa-lim.
5. Little Emperors, Grown Up
[>] 100 million only children: “Single-Child Population Tops 100 Million in China,” Xinhua website, July 7, 2008, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-07/07/content_6825563.htm.
[>] a guilt-ridden Zhang published: Tania Branigan, “China’s Cultural Revolution: Son’s Guilt over the Mother He Sent to Her Death,” The Guardian, March 27, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/27/china-cultural-revolution-sons-guilt-zhang-hongping.
[>] a group of Chinese and Japanese children on a camping trip: Sun Yunxiao, “The Contest in Summer Camp,” Reader Magazine, November 1993, Gansu People’s Publishing House.
[>] singletons tended to be more self-centered: D. Y. Chen, ed., The Only-Child Declaration (Shanghai: Hainan Publishing Company, 1997).
[>] less self-control: X. T. Feng and X. T. Zhang, “Discussion of the Special Environment of the Socialization of the Only-Child,” Quarterly Journal of Social Sciences 5 (1992): 33–37.
[>] academic achievements and sociability: D. L. Poston Jr. and T. Falbo, “Academic Performance and Personality Traits of Chinese Children: ‘Onlies’ Versus Others,” American Journal of Sociology 96, no. 2 (September 1990): 433–51.
[>] poorer eyesight: Hao Keming, An Empirical Study of China’s Only Child Population (Hong Kong: Guangdong Education Press, 2010), 207.
[>] differences are a result of family structure: L. Cameron, N. Erkal, L. Gangadharan, and X. Meng, “Little Emperors: Behavioral Impacts of China’s One-Child Policy,” Science, February 22, 2013.
[>] a series of letters from only children: Mei Zhong, “The Only Child Declaration: A Content Analysis of Published Stories by China’s Only Children,” Intercultural Communications Studies 14, no. 1 (2005).
[>] “all my classmates gave me a nickname, ‘Baby’”: Ibid., 20.
[>] “we don’t have our independent future”: Ibid., 21.
[>] coined the term ant tribe: Lian Si, Ant Tribe: A Record of College Graduates’ Crowded Life (Guangxi: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2010).
[>] they make poor hires: China Railway Construction Engineering Group, recruitment advertisement, February 3, 2015, http://www.buildhr.com/company /bfo6j/.
[>] “We don’t hire two
kinds of persons”: Jiang Xiaochun, “Employer Rejected Job Seekers from One-Child Family or Well-Off Family to Make Recruitment More Efficient,” Jinling Evening News (Nanjing City), June 24, 2014, E06.
[>] slang for “loser”: Josh Chin, “China’s Communist Party Tells Kids Being a Loser Is Nothing to Be Proud Of,” Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/12/03/communist-party-paper-warns-youth-on-dangers-of-self-deprecation/.
[>] over 1.5 billion times: “China’s Losers,” Economist, April 16, 2014, www.econo mist.com/news/china/21601007-amid-spreading-prosperity-generation-self-styled-also-rans-emerges-chinas-losers.
[>] “youth cannot be ignored”: Chin, “China’s Communist Party Tells Kids Being a Loser Is Nothing to Be Proud Of.”
[>] put toothpaste on their child’s toothbrush: Vanessa Fong, Only Hope: Coming of Age Under China’s One-Child Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 164.
[>] test-taking pressure does take its toll: Zhao Xinying, “School Tests Blamed for Suicides,” China Daily, May 14, 2014, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-05/14/content_17505294.htm.
[>] one in five Chinese marriages ends in divorce: Louisa Lim, “‘Lightning Divorces’ Strike China’s ‘Me Generation,’” National Public Radio website, November 17, 2010, http://www.npr.org/2010/11/09/131200166/china-s-me-generation-sends-divorce-rate-soaring.
[>] “that’s another matter”: @KAKA不被找到, “12 Chinese Youths Sell Property to Travel the World,” Tea Leaf Nation, May 31, 2012, http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/05/12-chinese-youths-sell-property-to-travel-the-world/.
[>] coined the term one-child family risk: Du Benfeng, “Population Policy and One-Child Family Risk in China,” International Journal of Social Science and Humanities 1, no. 1 (April 2012).
[>] will become an Empress: Liu Ting underwent multiple surgeries for gender reassignment in the spring of 2015. Margaux Schreurs, “Model Citizen Liu Ting Completes Gender Reassignment, Hailed by Media,” The Beijinger, April 15, 2015, http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2015/04/15/model-citizen-liu-ting-undergoes-gender-reassignment-procedures-hailed-chinese-media.
6. Welcome to the Dollhouse
[>] “gigantic mass of horny young men”: Quoted in Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, 109.
[>] 30 to 40 million surplus men: Jane Golley and Rod Tyers, “Gender ‘Rebalancing’ in China,” Asian Population Studies 10, no. 2 (2014), http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17441730.2014.902159#abstract.
[>] boys born for every 100 girls: World Bank, “Gender Statistics Highlights from 2012 World Development Report,” http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx. The figure of 119 boys for every 100 girls is also given by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, quoted by many media outlets, including the BBC in this report: “China Faces Growing Gender Imbalance,” BBC News, January 11, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8451289.stm.
[>] most unequal gender ratios: World Bank, “Gender Gaps in China: Facts and Figures,” October 2006, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEAPREGTOPGENDER/Resources/Gender-Gaps-Figures&Facts.pdf.
[>] “Chinese equivalent of Valium”: Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Bitter Roots,” New York Times, January 24, 1999.
[>] rural men who are increasingly the ones killing themselves: Paul S. F. Yip and Ka Y. Liu, “The Ecological Fallacy and the Gender Ratio of Suicide in China,” British Journal of Psychiatry 189, no. 5 (October 2006), http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/189/5/465.
[>] “I wish I had daughters”: Mei Fong, “It’s Cold Cash, Not Cold Feet, Motivating Runaway Brides in China,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2009.
[>] One in four men was unable to marry at all: Valerie Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 208.
[>] Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: Yi Zhang, “10 Problems Caused by Gender Imbalance of Population,” Red Flag Manuscript, no. 2 (2005): 13.
[>] heated up to such an extent: “Could Asia Really Go to War over These?” Economist, September 20, 2012, http://www.economist.com/node/21563316.
[>] “virile form of nationalism”: Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, “The Security Risks of China’s Abnormal Demographics,” Washington Post, April 30, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/30/the-security-risks-of-chinas-abnormal-demographics/.
[>] a third of the overall rise in crime: Lena Edlund, Hongbin Li, Junjian Yi, and Junsen Zhang, “More Men, More Crime: Evidence from China’s One-Child Policy,” available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1136376 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0042-7092.2007.00700.x.
[>] lower self-esteem: X. Zhou, Z. Yan, and T. Hesketh, “Depression and Agression in Never-Married Men in China: A Growing Problem,” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 48, no. 7 (July 2013): 1087–93, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23232692.
[>] may stimulate economic growth: Wei Shang-Jin and Zhang Xiaobo, “Sex Ratios, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Growth in the People’s Republic of China,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 16800, February 2011, http://www.nber.org/papers/w16800.
[>] excessive saving: Wei Shang-Jin and Zhang Xiabo, “The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China,” Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 3 (June 2011): 511–64.
[>] reduced crime: Golley and Tyers, “Gender ‘Rebalancing’ in China,” 143.
[>] Siwan Anderson: Siwan Anderson, “Economics of Dowry and Brideprice,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21 (Fall 2007): 151–74.
[>] caili rates across China: Gwen Guilford, Ritchie King, and Herman Wong, “Forget Dowries: Chinese Men Have to Pay Up to $24,000 to Get a Bride,” Quartz, June 9, 2013, http://qz.com/92267/in-a-reversal-of-the-dowry-chinese-men-pay-a-steep-price-for-their-brides/.
[>] housing prices in China between 2003 and 2009: Qingyuan Du and Shang-Jin Wei, “A Sexually Unbalanced Model of Current Account Imbalances,” National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2010, http://www.nber.org/papers/w16000.
[>] Only 30 percent of marital home deeds: Leta Hong Fincher, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (London: Zed Books, 2014).
[>] out of sixty-five postings: Sun Peidong, Who Will Marry My Daughter? (Beijing: China Social Science Press, 2012).
[>] China’s family structure: Simon Day, “Playing the Dating Game,” Southland Times, February 6, 2013, http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/life-style/8749732/Playing-the-dating-game.
[>] Parents send back handwritten notes: Lucy Hornby, “Chinese Tech Groups Turn to Matchmaking,” Financial Times, February 13, 2015, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d91a8e6a-b1a8-11e4-a830-00144feab7de.html#axzz3eUJVhDq5.
[>] breeding “quality” children: Hong Fincher, Leftover Women, 30.
[>] “Raise the Quality”: Xiaomeng Hu, “China’s Inevitable Choice: Raise the Quality of the Population, Control the Size of the Population,” People’s Daily (Beijing, China), December 20, 2000, http://www.envir.gov.cn/info/2000/12/1220794.htm.
[>] Upgrading population quality: Yu Zhu, “Population’s Quality Becoming the Main Influencing Factors in China,” Xinhua website, January 11, 2007, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2007-01/11/content_5594195.htm.
[>] lamented giving equal rights to women: “Leader Regrets Giving Equal Rights to Women,” New Straits Times, July 31, 1994, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1309&dat=19940731&id=PtxOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gBMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1931,4668371.
[>] the couple led separate lives: Malcolm Moore, “China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan: A Perfectly Scripted Life,” The Guardian, April 3, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9969052/Chinas-first-lady-Peng-Liyuan-a-perfectly-scripted-life.html.
[>] a September 2014 online poll: Yang Ding, “About Women Morality Course: We Need More Than Just Negating It,” Tencent Web, September 23, 2014, http://view.news.qq.com/original/intouchtoday/n2925.html.
[>] “violati
ng social morality”: “Accused of Violating Social Morality, Dongguan Women Morality Class Closed,” Sohu website, September 26, 2014, http://news.sohu.com/20140926/n404677996.shtml.
[>] “raising a daughter as a son”: Fong, Only Hope, 135.
[>] according to Gallup: Steve Crabtree and Anita Pugliese, “China Outpaces India for Women in the Workforce,” Gallup, November 2, 2012, http://www.gallup.com/poll/158501/china-outpaces-india-women-workforce.aspx.
[>] more than selling drugs or weapons: US Department of State, “Trafficking in Persons Report 2007,” http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2007/.
[>] about $1,500 per head: Lee Tae-hoon, “Female North Korean Defectors Priced at $1500,” Korea Times Nation, May 14, 2010.
[>] most people wanted both a son and a daughter: Zhou Chi, Zhou Xu Dong, Wang Xiao Lei, Zheng Wei Jun, Li Lu, and Therese Hesketh, “Changing Gender Preference in China Today: Implications for the Sex Ratio,” India Journal of Gender Studies 20, no. 1 (February 2013): 51–68, http://ijg.sagepub.com/content/20/1/51.abstract.
7. Better to Struggle to Live On, Than Die a Good Death
[>] five-to-one ratio will shift to 1.6 to one: Richard Jackson, Keisuke Nakashima, and Neil Howe, China’s Long March to Retirement Reform: The Graying of the Middle Kingdom Revisited (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2009), http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090422_gai_chinareport_en.pdf.
[>] China’s army of pensioners: Dexter Roberts, “China’s Brewing Pension Crisis,” Bloomberg News, August 9, 2012, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-09/chinas-brewing-pension-crisis.
[>] Half of China’s thirty-one provinces cannot pay: Ibid.
[>] “If they were their own country”: Ted Fishman, Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation (New York: Scribner, 2012).
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