China’s one child policy
What and When?
The Chinese one child policy was established by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979. It was introduced to limit china’s population growth and therefor limit its population. Couples are encouraged to have one child, if the child however is a girl couples would be allowed to have a second child and hope for a boy. After the second child they would be discouraged from having another child.
Couples are rewarded for having one child; they receive higher wages, interest free loans, retirement funds and priority housing and school enrolment.
Couples are given penalties for having more than one child; they could be fined from $370 to $12,800, pressured to abort pregnancy, confiscated belongings and getting fired from work
Where and Why?
China is situated in Eastern Asia and shares borders with Russia, India, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Tajikistan, North Korea and Bhutan.Most of the population is situated around the east coast where the main cities such as the capital Beijing are.
The one child policy was needed in China because of the rapid population growth. The problem was people versus limited resources. China only has so much land, water, food and natural resources which every person needs. If the population carried on rising as it would China would very soon face the problem of not having enough for everybody. The one child policy was implemented to slow down and decrease the population.
How?
Propaganda posters are used to encourage the one child policy. They are used to persuade people away from their traditional culture of baby boys and the posters usually depict a single baby girl like the one below. The poster aim to show that the happiest parents are the ones with a single baby.
Advantages of the one child policy
- Bigger food supply because there are less people to feed
- More resources
- Better health care for families
- Better living conditions
- Reduced employment- more jobs available
- It has successfully prevented 400 million births
- Since the policy began to 2010 the average number of child born to each woman in china has fell by over 50%
- 76% of the Chinese population agree with the one child policy
Disadvantages of the one child policy
- Forced abortions and sterilizations
- 25% of women of a reproductive age have had at least 1 abortion
- Each day in 2009, more than 35,000 forced abortions were performed in China
- The male-to-female rate in China surpasses the normal rate for all industrialized countries. According to the latest available census data china has 120 male births for every 100 girls. This compared to the average of 103 to 107 male births for every 100 girls