China’s One-Child Policy: Social Engineering and Its Costs

Social engineering especially concerning family life could only lead to negative societal consequences. As the most natural and most fundamental of social units, the family provides the conditions for the natural growth and development of its members, towards their becoming good human beings and useful citizens. Tampering with these natural duties and obligations is undermining the very purpose of human existence.

China is about to reap such negative consequences. Its coercive population control effort, the one-child policy that it launched some 20 years ago aimed at curbing the growth of its population, in general, and its female population, in particular, is a massive case in social engineering. Those who don’t comply are subject to either forced abortion or sterilization. Chai Ling, a former leader of China's 1989 pro-democracy movement, in this inspiring and enlightening essay, "China's one-child policy: As brutal and hypocritical as ever", condemns China’s one-child policy as barbaric and its consequences catastrophic.

What are the results of this coercive population control measure? Chai Ling enumerates them: 1) 100 million missing girls; 2) a growing gender imbalance of 120 boys over 100 girls being born (worse in rural areas where the ratio is 130 boys over 100 girls) – the prediction is such that in just 10 years, there will be 30 to 40 million more boys than girls under the age of 20 in China. (Sociologists are worried about problems of social instability -- that in the event that Chinese males are unable to find women to marry, cases of rape and other sex-related crimes will ensue); 3) the suicide rate among Chinese women is five times the world average, and is the No. 1 cause of death among rural women in China.

All this is tragic. Let it serve as a lesson to autocrats and totalitarian regimes the world over: no amount of political power in the world can alter the dictates of natural and familial living.

As to Chai Ling, she only has prayers for the women of China:

Since moving to the U.S., I have been blessed to marry the man of my dreams, and we have three beautiful daughters. Every June 1 [China’s "Children's Day"], I make sure to remind them how lucky we are to live in a country that values personal freedom more than hollow public pageants. When I tuck them in, I give them a kiss, read them a story and say a prayer for the women in China, that one day soon they may have the same freedom and safety that I have found in America and which is the birthright of my three little girls.