One of
the best books that I have read about China and life of its people
is, "China Road: A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power,"
written by Rob Gifford, an acclaimed British National Public Radio
reporter. In this book, Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, describes
his travel along Route 312 in China, which flows over three thousand
miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the
coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the
Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road.
The
book is a fascinating read, because Gifford describes his meetings
with ordinary and not-so-ordinary Chinese and simply lets them do the
talking. People he meets include well known talk-show hosts and
ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes,
cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with
members of a Shanghai jeep club. He hitchhikes across the Gobi
desert, and also sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops
along the way. His travel on this highway participates much in every
part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China
upside down.
I
found one particular conversation that Gifford had in a bus with a
lady Doctor and her staff, particularly disturbing, touchy and sad.
The lady Doctor actually happens to be a "family planning"
doctor and it is her job to go around in the villages and enforce
China's one-child policy. This means persuading pregnant women who
already have a child to undergo abortion. Sometimes she has to abort
8-month old fetuses, sometimes kill them with lethal injection, and,
if a baby still manages to be born alive, to kill it after birth. A
medical Doctor is considered by most of us as a life giver or an
angel. This Government Doctor works as an agent of death and village
folks, particularly village women shy away from her. I felt after
reading this that the small conversation really brings up the true
face of Chinese one child policy and the cruelty that is inherent in
its implementation.
The
one child policy was introduced in 1979 to alleviate social,
economic, and environmental problems in China. Demographers estimate
that the policy averted 200 million births between 1979 and 2009.
China argues that its one-child limit kept population growth in check
and supported the country’s rapid development that has seen it soar
from mass poverty to become the world’s second-largest economy.
However, it is also said that the policy is the principle reason
behind China's sex imbalance. It has resulted in an increase in
forced abortions, female infanticide, and under reporting of female
births. New social and family problems are cropping up in families as
there are no siblings. Many social scientists say that the new
generation of Chinese, who have been raised as an only child, and
called as little emperors, are extremely self centered, arrogant and
least bothered about the society. As the society turns gray,
demographics suggest that soon, the ratio of working population to
those who depend upon them, would become extremely skewed.
Chinese
Government news agency Xinhua had reported last year that the birth
rate has fallen to about 1.5 since the 1990s, which is well below the
replacement rate. China’s sex ratio has risen to 115 boys for every
100 girls and the working population has began to drop since last
year. It also agreed that the country is facing looming demographic
challenges, including a rapidly increasing elderly population, a
shrinking labor force and male-female imbalances.
The
harsh facts about implementation of the one child policy, that Rob
Gifford reports in his book, were kept well hidden from the Chinese
public so far. However last year, photos circulated online of a woman
forced to abort her baby seven months into her pregnancy. The net
savvy Chinese were outraged and realising that the enforcement of the
policy has been truly very excessive.
China’s
top legislative committee: the
standing committee of the National People’s Congress: China’s
rubber-stamp parliament, decided this week to loosen
country’s hugely controversial one-child policy. Xinhua says that
Provincial congresses and their standing committees will decide on
implementing the new policy, based on evaluation of local demographic
situation and in line with the law on population and family planning
as well as this resolution. The one-child policy reforms are expected
to come into force in the first quarter of 2014.
No
doubt, this is a welcome step. However, a sour note to this otherwise
welcome decision is that the state still retains the principle of
deciding itself how many children people should have. For human right
activists around the world, this may not be acceptable at all.
In the
year 1957, China's chairman Mao Zedong had said in a public speech:
"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of
thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and
the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."
He made this statement to invite the Chinese intelligentsia to
criticize the political system then existing in Communist China.
After exactly six weeks, Mao abruptly changed course. The crackdown
continued through 1957 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who
were critical of the regime and its ideology. Those targeted were
publicly criticized and condemned to prison labor camps. Mao had then
remarked at that time that he had "enticed
the snakes out of their caves." Human
right activists can only hope that the new Chinese policy is for
keeps and not a repeat of Mao's hundred flower campaign of six weeks.
30th
December 2013
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