Confronting Overpopulation in China

 

The world’s population has reached seven billion on October 31, 2011, according to the “2010 Revision of the World Population Prospects”.  As the country with the biggest population in the world, according to the China population clock, China has 1,319,175,365 citizens, which means that in every five people in the world, one is Chinese.  This article is going to focus on why China has such a huge population and the real situation about the One-Child policy in China.

Xu Zhuoren, a modern woman author in China, tells the history of overpopulation in China.  According to Xu, there are three major reasons behind lead China to have the biggest population.  The first reason is due to the country’s historical circumstance.  Mother Heroine was an honorary title in the Soviet Union awarded to all mothers who had ten or more children in 1944.  World War II did not end until 1945; with millions of soldiers’ deaths from the battlefields, the Soviet Union had such a small population that the government started to encourage mothers to have more children.  During that time period, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was closest ally of China.  Influenced by the Soviet Union, the Chinese government also started Mother Heroine policy and encouraged citizens to bear a lot of children as honor.

The second reason is that Mao Zedong, the chairman of China at that time, had a strong belief that, “A larger population means greater manpower” (Quotations from chairman Mao Tse-tung).  “Mao proclaimed in 1949 that ‘Of all things in the world, people are the most precious.’  The communist government condemned birth control and banned imports of contraceptives” (Times).

Lastly, overpopulation was the result of the Great Chinese Famine (1959- 1961).  Ma Yinchu, a prominent Chinese economist, had presented his New Population Theory, claiming that further population growth at such high rates would be detrimental to China’s development.  Nonetheless, the tragedy of Great Chinese Famine was the major concern of China at the time that no one was aware of the problems of overpopulation.  “It appears that them were between 14 million and 26 million excess deaths over the three years” (The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding).

Except the reasons Xu had already mentioned, according to New Population Theory, there are three other reasons, which are the decrease of the infant mortality rate, the longer longevity people have, and the decrease of the mortality that is caused by the war, helped the birth rate of China reach its vertex in 1964, which was roughly 38%.

As a response to the problems caused by overpopulation, the Chinese government started the Family Planning policy in 1956.  However, “a compromise was struck within the top leadership during Mao’s reign, resulting in a disjunction between the theory and practice of population control.  Therefore, the largely ineffective first and second birth control campaigns (1956-58, 1962-66) were justified mainly by the lame reason of protecting the health of women and children” (Wong Siu-lun, The China Quarterly).  “In 1979 the government introduced a policy requiring couples from China’s ethnic Han majority to have only one child (the law has largely exempted ethnic minorities).  It has remained virtually the same ever since” (Times).

With the promotion of One-Child Policy, the “Mother Heroines” were no longer regarded as an honorary position; instead, they had to hide themselves from the police to keep their supernumerary children alive.  “Depending on where they live, couples can be fined thousands of dollars for having a supernumerary child without a permit, and reports of forced abortions or sterilization are common” (Times).  Ms. Huang Liping, a mother of two children living through the One-Child Policy, recounts her unforgettable experience while bearing her second child.  Knowing that she would be forced to get abortion if she got caught, Huang decided to leave her hometown– Wuxi, a small city in Jiangsu Providence, and started her long journey hiding away from the police.  She stayed in five different cities in total, and finally gave birth to her baby in Suzhou in 1996.  “We had to pay 30,000 yuan in order to get their newborn baby’s census register” (Huang), which was a large amount of money at that time.

Ms. Hong Huizhen, a Chinese woman who was born in 1972, witnessed the changes about China’s population.  Her grandparents have ten children; her parents have three children, and she has two children.  According to Ms. Hong, she had similar experience as Huang did while giving birth to her second child.  She also points out that there are fewer mothers living in the urban choosing to bear supernumerary children than the ones from the countryside, and there are two reasons caused this interesting circumstance.  One is the cultural difference exists between urban and rural area.  Most people living in the city treat their child equally no matter what gender he/she has while most people living in the rural area prefer boys to girls because boys have more opportunities for work.  The other one is the job occupation’s difference. Most families living in the rural area in China are farmers, and they do not need to worry about losing their jobs while most people in the city work for different companies.  According to the One-Child policy, once the family decides to have a supernumerary child, one of the parents will be fired by his or her company.

Even though there are some consequences caused by Family Planning, such as gender discrimination and the lack of young people, the policy did help decrease the population.  According to Times magazine, China’s population growth dropped by half from 1970 to 1976.  Chinanews also points out that it is believed to have prevented more than 300,000,000 births since 1979.  Fifty-six years has passed since the publication of One-Child policy, and people are going to situation to have one child only.  Many young couples do not even want to have a baby, which might lead to the low birth rate in the future.

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