China’s announcement last week that it will let all couples have two children ended one of the most contentious birth restrictions in history–the one-child policy.
Implemented in 1980 to rein in explosive population growth during the Mao Zedong era, the one-child policy and its enforcement had myriad consequences, including forced abortions and sterilization. It placed the burden of elderly care on single children and fueled a gender imbalance. Some researchers also say a new generation of only children – or “little emperors” — are more pessimistic and less competitive than older generations with siblings. Now, the Chinese government is shifting course to offset the effects of a rapidly aging population and to avert labor shortages.
China Real Time spoke to Mei Fong, author of the book “One Child: The Past and Future of China’s Most Radical Experiment” and a former Wall Street Journal reporter, about the one-child policy and the unwinding of it. The book will be published in hardcover in January, but a digital edition was released Tuesday, Nov. 3. Below are edited excerpts of the interview: Mei Fong
Many couples say that despite changes in the policy, they will not have two children. What can the government do to promote births?
There was a recent Internet survey [on Chinese website Sina of 180,000 respondents who were asked if they wanted a second child] saying that 43% of people don’t want children. But there’s a difference of what people say and what they will do. A lot of people ideally want to have two so that they can have both a boy and a girl. The problem is that the one-child policy wasn’t the sole reason people weren’t and aren’t having children. For urban residents, the idea of having just one has been ingrained in them. It’s a social and economic decision and it would take a major mind shift to think of anything else.
People consider it almost it irresponsible to divert resources from any child.
One of the things that demographer Cai Yong said that has always stuck in my mind is that people are too rational for the business of having children.
Who are the likely candidates to have more children?
It’s the rich ones who will add a child. Wealthy people have been traveling to the U.S. for fertility services and U.S. passports , though it’s unclear how many. I know of one couple in Shanghai who had three children by going to the U.S. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
But it’s hard to make generalities about China. It’s a big place and we all know someone who has had a second child or third child.
Will that mean that a two-child policy will create a bigger upper class? And what will be the consequence? One of the things that the one-child policy has created already is an inequality gap. The spectrum hit the middle class, because the people above the middle class can afford to pay for it, while the ones below were often exempt. The one-child policy is adding to the class-struggle issues. It’s the rich people who have and will have bigger families. They’re the ones that can afford fertility treatment, because fertility is a major problem. They could always afford to pay the penalties [for having more than one child].
Several years ago, there was a study that said China’s single children, its little emperors, were less competitive and less empathetic than those with siblings. Do you see that changing? I have some doubts about that because there have been many different studies on this. But certainly, they do seem to give themselves more pessimistic labeling, like diao si [roughly translated as loser], than others.
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