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China to formalize one-child policy
By Antoaneta Bezlova
May 24, 2001
Beijing - After more than 40 drafts and heated debates stretching over two
decades, one of China's most controversial laws - its first legislation on
family planning and population - is about to emerge. The law would bestow a
legal mantle on the country's one-child population policy, which has been in
practice since 1980.
"Conditions are ripe now to introduce this legislation, as the idea of family
planning and the importance of reproductive health have been widely accepted by
the public," Shi Chunjing, vice director of the Regulation Department with the
State Family Planning Commission, said last month. If approved by the National
People's Congress, China's parliament, the family planning and population law
would provide a strong legal defense for China's draconian birth-control
policy, often decried in the past by human rights organizations for using
forced abortions and sterilizations. While experiments with more liberal
approaches to family planning, which emphasize contraceptive choice over
coercion, have increased markedly over recent years, most local officials
remain under tremendous pressure to keep population growth rates low. This
leads many of them to take extreme, often violent measures.
Even as the final draft of the law sailed through the first round of
deliberations at the National People's Congress, reports about continuing
abuses by birth control officials in many places in the country leaked through
relatives of the victims and the Hong Kong press. A woman from southeastern
Fujian province was beaten to death by birth control officials who wanted to
sterilize her against her will, relatives of the victim told the Agence France
Presse news agency. Sun Zhonghua, 34, from a farming family in Xiapu county in
Fujian, was the mother of two boys aged 12 and 13.
She had refused to submit to sterilization, citing medical condition. Last
week, Sun was taken away by birth control officials and beaten to death in
their custody, her family said.
In April, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that birth
control officials in Zengcheng city, Guangdong province have incarcerated the
aged relatives of migrant workers who had failed to return home for family
planning check-ups. According to local residents, relatives of absent migrants
were held in groups of four in cramped conditions with no toilets. Those
migrants who did not have relatives who could be imprisoned as bargaining chips
had their homes demolished, the newspaper said.
These cases are yet another sign that even as the family planning policy is set
to become a law, its enforcement remains difficult, and made so also by China's
large rural population. Other challenges the legislation faces are the aging of
Chinese society and the worsening ratio between boys and girls, revealed
sharply during the country's latest census in 2000.
Twenty years ago, China began implementing its strict birth-control policy,
based on an "Open Letter", issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party. The letter called on all Party and Youth League members to
take the lead in practising the "one child per couple" family planning policy.
The family-planing policy stipulates that each couple living in the cities
should have only one child, unless one or both of the couple are from an ethnic
minority or they are both only children. In most rural areas, a couple may have
a second child after a break of several years.
Today, China prides itself on having achieved the "three lows" - low birth
rate, low death rate and low growth rate. China's census last year reported a
population of 1.265 billion, an increase of 132 million, or 11.6 percent since
the previous count 11 years ago. But the growth rate fell sharply during the
decade, which saw an annual population growth rate of 1.07 percent - 0.4
percent points lower than the 1980s' growth rate. The census also found that
the size of Chinese families had dropped significantly, from an average of 3.96
people to 3.44 people.
The government claims that its stringent birth-control policy had succeeded in
avoiding a population explosion that would have endangered China's ability to
feed its people. It says that the "one child" policy was responsible for
preventing 250 million births in the past 20 years.
Accused of abuses in the past, family planning officials have defended
themselves by saying China must feed 22 percent of the world's population on 7
percent of arable land. The rationale goes that if China's farmers are unable
to produce enough grain to keep pace with population increases, the country's
expanded imports of grain could affect other countries by driving up grain
prices.
Yet despite the policy's draconian rules, family planning targets have been
loosely enforced in many of China's poorest regions. Nowadays it is common to
find couples in the countryside, where 80 percent of the population live, with
five, six or even more children.
A surge of unplanned births among China's "floating" population of migrants is
also hindering authorities' effort to control population growth. In recent
years, millions of migrant workers have left for jobs in the cities and escaped
the control of family planning officials.
One of the biggest challenges lying ahead is the aging of China's population,
as revealed by last year fifth national census. China's population under 14
years old now accounts for 22.9 percent of the total, a drop of 4.8 percentage
points from the previous census in 1990. As the country has no universal social
security system, the question of who supports aging parents will be one of the
most hotly debated as the law takes shape.
Another complicated issue will be China's worsening record of gender imbalance.
The census revealed there were 117 boys born for every 100 girls in 2000, up
from 114 in 1990. While the country prohibits sex-selective abortions,
demographers say pressure to abort girls has been increased by family planning
rules that limit couples to one or two children. In a mainly agrarian society
like China, it is the son who carries the family line and girls face
discrimination both before and after birth.
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