A policy gone horribly wrong

An uncle is never just uncle for example he could be bobo if he was your fatherrsquos older brother shushu if younger jiujiu if he was your motherrsquos brother and so on Little Stream would never just be sister to Jiayis unborn child for there is no plainvanilla Chinese equivalent of that word She would always be jiejie mdash older sister But this elaborate taxonomy is collapsing By the time Little Stream has her own children many of these terms will be as archaic as LatinJournalist Mei Fongrsquos OneChild The Story of Chinarsquos Most Radical Experiment is a comprehensive analysis of the many ripples of the flawed programmeImagine a family gathering without chachas mamas phuphis taais mausis and buaas Itrsquos enough to make Bollywood shudder But such an image is just one cold silent frame of the depressing future that awaits China in the wake of its onechild policy an excessive scheme that was engineered by military rather than social scientists according Pulitzerprize winning American reporter Mei FongPeppered with deeply personal accounts and thoroughlyresearched OneChild The Story of Chinarsquos Most Radical Experiment is Fongrsquos comprehensive analysis of the many ripples of the onechild programme Gender imbalance that sometimes manifests as entire villages full of bachelors a growing market for brides the spiraling sales of sex dolls the trauma of forced abortions and sterilisations a rapidlyageing population the grief of families who lose their only children in a culture where family is sacrosanct and perhaps worst of all the alienation that childless couples suffer at old ageItrsquos a weighty subject one that Fong incredibly lightens up with cleverly interspersed moments of humour in the form of mistranslated signs ldquopart of the cityrsquos crooked charmrdquo that disappeared as China prepared to host the Olympics her firstperson experiences of dating events unusual festivals and rituals and crazy laws one that was passed in Gansu Province in 1988 prohibited reproduction of the dullwitted idiots or blockheadsA pedestrian walks past a billboard reading Control population growth and raise the quality of the population in Beijing China in 2003 In an effort to control the rapid population the government implemented a singlechild policy in the 1970s aiming to keep the count below 16 billion until 2050 with zero population growth PicGetty ImagesIn an interview the author discusses her new book ExcerptsQ Do you worry about censorshipbeing banned from ChinaA I am wary of it but I am not and have never been a Chinese citizen so I think that helps a little The long and short of it is that I will not publish on the mainland or in such a way that the book would be censored There have been cases where HK booksellers with passports from other nations have been detained in China for being critical of the regime I think the possibility is small but I donrsquot want to risk it I am mother to small childrenQ There were as you point out many exceptions to the onechild policy How then are its effects so dramaticA It is a misnomer of a name mdasheveryone wasnrsquot subject to the onechild policy but everyone was restricted to some family size A full third of Chinese households was subject to a strict onechild rule and the other twothirds would have some variation of the onechild policy So for example they may be allowed to have more than one child under certain exceptions say if youre part of the minority tribes or if you live in rural areas and your first child was a girl But it still didnrsquot mean that you can have as many children as you want Yoursquore still subject to restrictions including sterilisations once your quota is done Besides the third that was subject to the rule comprised mostly of urban dwellers from the richest cities So in terms of buying power consumption in terms of elite decision making this is the sector thats most affected These are your major economic movers people who buy your Samsungs and iPhones they are the brain trust and that has economic implications tooQ While the policy led to a skewed sex ratio it also produced a band of highachieving women as their familiesrsquo resources were dedicated exclusively to them Do you feel the policy has brought about any change in mindset with regards to the capabilities of women and perspectives towards the girl childA I think it has definitely helped In families where they canrsquot have sons they very pragmatically divert resources to the daughter But these changes about the valuation of the girls womens rights have also been happening in other parts of the world It goes hand in hand with modernisation womenrsquos education and so forth So could these desirable effects have been achieved without the excesses of the onechild policy Women achieve to a greater degree in China but look at their peers in South Korea Taiwan India too in some parts These countries have made the same gains without the pain associated with this policyIn the second part of the book I also talk about how theres a backlash against this rising tide of feminism in China These educated women who are seen as prime childbearers are subject to a lot of pressure to marry early and even shamed into getting married with the leftover women campaign So those are some of the undesirable effectsQ Which stories and experiences were particularly memorableA Lots of them Some were so bizarre I couldnrsquot even put them in the book For instance I wanted to write about how flyers were put up in the university district asking people to come and test sex dolls The area where this was happening was called Long Dong which means Dragonrsquos Cave in Chinese I thought people in the West are going to think Im making this up mdash you know sex dolls long dong laughsThere was another one that was very random I met this relative of a friend of mine who was just giving us a ride He used to be a small town official and had to enforce the rules He told me about this nighttime raid on a pregnant woman how they chased her into a pond and she stood inside the pond crying Maybe because Irsquom a writer the imagery of this woman in the dark up to her neck in water heavily pregnant crying while these birth officials circle round the pond like predators at a watering hole transfixed me It was very strong imagery When this man who seemed so blaseacute recalled it all it was clear that underneath it all there were these very strong issues of guiltQ At the root of the onechild policy was of course the goal of prosperity Chinarsquos GDP has gone up So would you say the policy delivered on its goalsA A lot of economists agree that the last 30 years of growth were because of other things China removed socialist controls from the economy which let private entrepreneurship flourish encouraged foreign investmenthellipone of the reasons for Chinarsquos growth was its huge workforce mdash more people not less One of the aftereffects of the policy is a diminished workforce This will probably slow economic growth going aheadYes population reduction was useful but did they need to enforce it so severely The answer is No The ldquoLater Longer Fewerrdquo programme that was in place 10 years before the onechild policy saw sharp reductions and families dropped from six kids to three In East Asian countries population fell as an effect of education and opportunities mdash it happened anyway without the onechild policy Nature makes a few more boys than girls to compensate for men dying young because of violence etc So the global average is about 105107 boys100 girlsIn India where theres also a gender preference the average is 110100 In China its 116100 mdash the highest in the world So itrsquos accelerated certain existing tendencies Similarly with ageing societies mdash all across the world any place where there are smaller families over time you will have a disproportionate ratio of young people to old people But what took 50 years to happen in Europe has taken half the time to happen in China mdash 25 years one generation Europe had the time to generate wealth build social networks China has arrived at this level without arriving at First World per capita income