One-child policy<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For parents who had “unauthorized” births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. Many families also kept their illegal children hidden so that they would not be punished by the government.[101]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of the policy, women were required to have a contraceptive intrauterine device<\/a> (IUD) surgically installed after having a first child, and to be sterilized by tubal ligation<\/a> after having a second child. From 1980 to 2014, 324 million Chinese women were fitted with IUDs in this way and 108 million were sterilized. Women who refused these procedures \u2013 which many resented \u2013 could lose their government employment and their children could lose access to education or health services and have any privileges revoked. The IUDs installed in this way were modified such that they could not be removed manually, but only through surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016, following the abolition of the one-child policy, the Chinese government announced that IUD removals would now be paid for by the government.[59]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chinese government, quoting Zhai Zhenwu, director of Renmin University’s School of Sociology and Population in Beijing, estimates that 400\u00a0million births were prevented by the one-child policy as of 2011, while some demographers challenge that number, putting the figure at perhaps half that level, according to CNN.[134]<\/a><\/sup> Zhai clarified that the 400\u00a0million estimate referred not just to the one-child policy, but includes births prevented by predecessor policies implemented one decade before, stating that “there are many different numbers out there but it doesn’t change the basic fact that the policy prevented a really large number of births”.[135]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n This claim is disputed by Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, and Cai Yong from the Carolina Population Center<\/a> at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill[135]<\/a><\/sup> Wang claims that “Thailand and China have had almost identical fertility trajectories since the mid 1980s”, and “Thailand does not have a one-child policy.”[135]<\/a><\/sup> China’s Health Ministry has also disclosed that at least 336\u00a0million abortions were performed on account of the policy.[136]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a report by the US embassy, scholarship published by Chinese scholars and their presentations at the October 1997 Beijing conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population<\/a> seemed to suggest that market-based incentives or increasing voluntariness is not morally better but that it is, in the end, more effective.[137]<\/a><\/sup> In 1988, Zeng Yi and Professor T. Paul Schultz of Yale University<\/a> discussed the effect of the transformation to the market on Chinese fertility, arguing that the introduction of the contract responsibility system<\/a> in agriculture during the early 1980s weakened family planning controls during that period.[138]<\/a><\/sup> Zeng contended that the “big cooking pot” system of the People’s Communes<\/a> had insulated people from the costs<\/a> of having many children. By the late 1980s, economic costs and incentives created by the contract system were already reducing the number of children farmers wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A long-term experiment in a county in Shanxi, in which the family planning law was suspended, suggested that families would not have many more children even if the law were abolished.[47]<\/a><\/sup> A 2003 review of the policy-making process behind the adoption of the one-child policy shows that less intrusive options, including those that emphasized delay and spacing of births, were known but not fully considered by China’s political leaders.[139]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Corrupted government officials and especially wealthy individuals have often been able to violate the policy in spite of fines.[140]<\/a><\/sup> Filmmaker Zhang Yimou had three children and was subsequently fined 7.48 million yuan ($1.2 million).[141]<\/a><\/sup> For example, between 2000 and 2005, as many as 1,968 officials in Hunan province were found to be violating the policy, according to the provincial family planning commission; also exposed by the commission were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and 6 senior intellectuals.[140]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the offending officials did not face penalties,[140]<\/a><\/sup> although the government did respond by raising fines and calling on local officials to “expose the celebrities and high-income people who violate the family planning policy and have more than one child”.[140]<\/a><\/sup> Also, people who lived in the rural areas of China were allowed to have two children without punishment, although the family is required to wait a couple of years before having another child.[142]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Further information: Human rights in China<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The one-child policy has been challenged for violating a human right<\/a> to determine the size of one’s own proper family. According to a 1968 proclamation of the International Conference on Human Rights, “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children.”[143]<\/a><\/sup>[144]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph<\/a><\/em>, a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for Huaiji County<\/a>, Guangdong<\/a> in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. According to the article local officials were being pressured into purchasing portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages. The article also reported that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort, usually by an injection of saline solution<\/a>.[145]<\/a><\/sup> A 1993 book by social scientist and anti-abortion political activist Steven W. Mosher<\/a> reported that women in their ninth month of pregnancy, or already in labour, were having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth.[146]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a 2005 news report by Australian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a> correspondent John Taylor, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization in 2002 but ineffectively enforces the measure.[147]<\/a><\/sup> In 2012, Feng Jianmei<\/a>, a villager from Shaanxi province was forced into an abortion by local officials after her family refused to pay the fine for having a second child. Chinese authorities have since apologized and two officials were fired, while five others were sanctioned.[148]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the past, China promoted eugenics<\/a> as part of its population planning policies, but the government has backed away from such policies, as evidenced by China’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities<\/a>, which compels the nation to significantly reform its genetic testing laws.[149]<\/a><\/sup> Recent[when?<\/a><\/em>]<\/sup> research has also emphasized the necessity of understanding a myriad of complex social relations that affect the meaning of informed consent<\/a> in China.[150]<\/a><\/sup> Furthermore, in 2003, China revised its marriage registration regulations and couples no longer have to submit to a premarital physical or genetic examination before being granted a marriage license.[151]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Nations Population Fund<\/a>‘s (UNFPA) support for family planning in China, which has been associated with the One-Child policy in the United States, led the US Congress<\/a> to pull out of the UNFPA during the Reagan administration,[152]<\/a><\/sup> and again under George W. Bush<\/a>‘s presidency, citing human rights abuses[153]<\/a><\/sup> and stating that the right to “found a family” was protected under the Preamble<\/a> in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a>.[154]<\/a><\/sup> Barack Obama<\/a> resumed U.S. government financial support for the UNFPA shortly after taking office in 2009, intending to “work collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV\/AIDS<\/a> and provide family planning<\/a> assistance to women in 154 countries”.[155]<\/a><\/sup>[156]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sex-selected abortion, abandonment, and infanticide<\/a> are illegal in China. Nevertheless, the US Department of State<\/a>,[157]<\/a><\/sup> the Parliament of the United Kingdom<\/a>,[158]<\/a><\/sup> and the human rights<\/a> organization Amnesty International[159]<\/a><\/sup> have all declared that infanticide still exists.[160]<\/a><\/sup>[161]<\/a><\/sup>[162]<\/a><\/sup> A writer for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs<\/a> wrote, “The ‘one-child’ policy has also led to what Amartya Sen first called ‘Missing Women’, or the 100 million girls ‘missing’ from the populations of China (and other developing countries) as a result of female infanticide, abandonment, and neglect”.[163]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered the following summary as to the long term effects of sex-selective abortion<\/a> and abandonment of female infants:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Multiple research studies have also found that sex-selective abortion \u2013 where a woman undergoes an ultrasound to determine the sex of her baby, and then aborts it if it’s a girl \u2013 was widespread for years, particularly for second or subsequent children. Millions of female fetuses have been aborted since the 1970s. China outlawed sex selective abortions in 2005, but the law is tough to enforce because of the difficulty of proving why a couple decided to have an abortion. The abandonment, and killing, of baby girls has also been reported, though recent research studies say it has become rare, in part due to strict criminal prohibitions.[33]<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Anthropologist G. William Skinner<\/a> at the University of California, Davis<\/a> and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua have claimed that infanticide was fairly common in China before the 1990s.[164]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One-child policy For parents who had “unauthorized” births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. … Leer m\u00e1s<\/a><\/p>\nMandatory contraception and sterilization<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Statement of the effect of the policy on birth reduction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Unequal enforcement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Human rights violations<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Effect on infanticide rates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n