{"id":4211,"date":"2016-03-30T08:40:51","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T14:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4211"},"modified":"2016-03-30T08:40:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T14:40:51","slug":"from-the-library-one-child-the-story-of-chinas-most-radical-experiement-by-mei-fong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/03\/from-the-library-one-child-the-story-of-chinas-most-radical-experiement-by-mei-fong.html","title":{"rendered":"From the library: One Child; The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiement, by Mei Fong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The title is somewhat misleading: \u00a0this book is not a detailed history of the One-Child policy but addresses, instead, various aspects of the policy and its consequences, and its connection to Chinese culture, and attitudes toward family, and toward death. \u00a0To be honest, with respect to China as a political entity and geopolitical force, it\u2019s easy to feel schadenfreude about the future of the not-so-rosy country, even if you feel sympathy\u00a0for actual Chinese people.<\/p>\n

Unlike many authors of recent half-memoir, half-narratives of China, Fong is not an American transplant seeing the world through the eyes of translators, or growing in understanding of the culture as the author\u2019s language skills grow (there were a number of such memoirs a while back); instead, she\u2019s an ethnic Chinese who grew up in the Chinese community in Malaysia, so that she can understand the Chinese (and, importantly, can understand Chinese) more deeply, while at the same time having an extensive background in reporting on China for American readers \u2014 she was a China correspondant for the Wall Street Journal during the time frame which she chronicles in the book, centered\u00a0around the 2008 Olympics. \u00a0(How she made it from Malaysia to American journalism isn\u2019t specified; according to Wikipedia<\/a>, she got a graduate degree from Columbia and moved up the journalism ranks after that.)<\/p>\n

She begins her story with the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, which I recall primarily from reports of shoddy construction killing large numbers of children whose schools crumpled. \u00a0But it was also an early test case for the one-child policy, and, despite the various exceptions to the policy, it had been implemented there to such a degree that 2\/3rd of families are single child families (p. 3), and 8,000 families lost, not just a<\/em> child, but their only<\/em> child, and many attempted sterilization reversals. \u00a0For these families, and others across the country whose only child dies, it is not merely a matter of being dependent on children in old age, or fearing lonliness \u2014 there is a particular shamefulness about having no children, that makes it all the more devastating.<\/p>\n

How did the one-child policy begin? \u00a0Technocrats \u2014 indeed, rocket scientists \u2014 proposed it, without the input of demographers (or actuaries!) who didn\u2019t exist in China at the time, or were at any rate, after the Cultural Revolution, lacking in the basic tools of the trade. \u00a0It was officially launched in 1980, roughly a decade after the West began fretting about population growth. \u00a0(Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb<\/em> in 1968, the United Natoins Fund for Population Activities was launched in 1969, The Club of Rome published\u00a0The Limits to Growth<\/em> in 1972, and in the 70s, other Asian countries had campaigns such as forced sterilization in India, as well as campaigns in South Korea and Singapore (it seems to me that I remember Singapore having such elements as not just propaganda but limits on maternity leave and other benefits past two children).<\/p>\n

In China, Mao for much of his time in power took a \u201cthe more the merrier\u201d approach, and the population lept from 540 million in 1949 to 800 million 20 years later (p. 47). \u00a0But in the 70s, he likewise changed his tune, and the government began a \u201cLater, Longer, Fewer\u201d campaign, which reduced TFR from 6 to 3 births per women over that decade. \u00a0Why they they move to the more radical and coercive One-Child policy? \u00a0Because planners were convinced that it was the only way to bring about economic growth \u2014 though Fong disputes the claim that it was the radical curb in birthrates that produced its economic growth in any case.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s been the impact of the policy? \u00a0Some of the impacts are well-known, often-discussed. \u00a0The \u201cLittle Emperors\u201d \u2014 the only children of only children, who were feared to become coddled and spoiled, expecting participation trophies just for showing up, have, really, the opposite problem: \u00a0their parents have invested heavily in them, and they feel the burden of those expectations weighing them down. \u00a0The bachelors in rural villages, who can\u2019t find wives because at every level of society, it\u2019s expected that women marry up (and thus, high achieving women have the same difficulty finding husbands \u2014 all the more so because of Chinese cultural beliefs that women past their late twenties are too old to find a husband).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the case that, for all that rural women try desparately to have additional children, and are victims of forced abortion as a result, the increasingly urban population has adapted so well to the one-child norm that, even with the official announcement of a two-child policy (but nonetheless one in which\u00a0\u00a0those two children must be \u201cin-plan\u201d), these urbanites do not want more than one child: \u00a0the stakes are too high, the investment too costly, in ensuring that your child succeeds (sound familiar), for families to feel that they have the luxury of more than one child. \u00a0What\u2019s more, the massive numbers of rural parents who have left for jobs in cities, children under the care of their grandparents, are not conducive to larger families, either.<\/p>\n

And the long-term impacts? \u00a0A country that will grow old, without having achieved the wealth to enable it to support its elderly. \u00a0Already, the seemingly endless supply of rural young adults willing to work endless hours in factories, and be roused from their beds for double shifts when Apple makes a design change (that is, the inhumane treatment of workers that we\u2019re told is necessary for Apple to build its devices, and the reason why this can only be done in China), is decreasing.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s an\u00a0element of that demographic transition that was new to me: \u00a0China, for all its reputation as a place where the old are showered with respect, has had those Confucian traditions sundered by the twin forces of communism and urban migration. \u00a0What\u2019s more, discussions around end-of-life care and planning are hindered by a cultural reluctance to talk about death, and deeply-ingrained supersititions. \u00a0In addition, children who have neglected their parents in their old age, often insist on every lifesaving measure possible, even as death approaches, to save face and prove that they have still done their filial duty.<\/p>\n

For all that China has been rather successful in inculcating atheism in its people, people still look to past traditions for guidance in what to believe about what happens after death, Fong says.<\/p>\n

But I think the reason for this abohorrence [superstitions about death] stretches beyond materialistic culture and has its roots in the Chinese system of beliefs around what happens after death. \u00a0Broadly speaking, most Han Chinese hold beliefs taht are an amalgamation of Taoism, Buddhism<\/a>, and Confucionism, with a good dollop of folk religion and ancestor worship sprinkled in. \u00a0In general, it results in a vision of the afterlife similar to this one: \u00a0you still need money and crature comforts, you still have bureaucracy and hierarchy, and you must slog on in a more-or-less eternal cycle of rebirth. \u00a0Unlike the Muslim and CHristian creed, there is very little vision of a soothing Eternal Rest. \u00a0(p. 162)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Offering items for the dead \u2014 paper representations of goods \u2014 still continues, and families still believe they need offspring to care for them after death in this way.<\/p>\n

Fong concludes her book with descriptions of wealthy Chinese families who, believing that it is all-important to have one\u2019s child be as talented and successful as possible, have turned to surrogacy, in the United States, with academically-achieving egg donors; and she believes that, as techonology develops to select the \u201cbest\u201d offspring, it will come out of China.<\/p>\n

But \u2014 to return to my initial statement \u2014 as an ever-increasing proportion of its population moves into old age, China will have sigificant problems to deal with. \u00a0Will it take the \u201csoylent green\u201d approach? \u00a0That seems a stretch. \u00a0Will they try to centrally-plan their way out of it? \u00a0Or will they bumble around and simply become weaker over time?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title is somewhat misleading: \u00a0this book is not a detailed history of the One-Child policy but addresses, instead, various aspects of the policy and its consequences, and its connection to Chinese culture, and attitudes toward family, and toward death. \u00a0To be honest, with respect to China as a political entity and geopolitical force, it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,362,363],"class_list":["post-4211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-from-the-library","tag-china","tag-one-child-policy"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the library: One Child; The Story of China's Most Radical Experiement, by Mei Fong<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The title is somewhat misleading: \u00a0this book is not a detailed history of the One-Child policy but addresses, instead, various aspects of the policy and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/03\/from-the-library-one-child-the-story-of-chinas-most-radical-experiement-by-mei-fong.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From the library: One Child; 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