Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T09:35:41.981Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

China’s One-Child Policy, a Policy without a Future

Pitfalls of the “Common Good” Argument and the Authoritarian Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Abstract:

The Chinese Communist Party government has been forcefully promoting its jihua shengyu (planned fertility) program, known as the “one-child policy,” for more than three decades. A distinctive authoritarian model of population governance has been developed. A pertinent question to be asked is whether China’s one-child policy and the authoritarian model of population governance have a future. The answer must be no; they do not. Although there are many demographic, economic, and social rationales for terminating the one-child policy, the most fundamental reason for opposing its continuation is drawn from ethics. The key ethical rationale offered for the policy is that it promotes the common social good, not only for China and the Chinese people but for the whole human family. The major irony associated with this apparently convincing justification is that, although designed to improve living standards and help relieve poverty and underdevelopment, the one-child policy and the application of the authoritarian model have instead caused massive suffering to Chinese people, especially women, and made them victims of state violence. A lesson from China—one learned at the cost of individual and social suffering on an enormous scale—is that an essential prerequisite for the pursuit of the common good is the creation of adequate constraints on state power.

Type
Special Section: Bioethics Beyond Borders
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Kaiman, J. China’s one-child policy to be relaxed as part of reforms package. The Guardian 2013 Nov 15;Google ScholarBuckley, C. China to ease longtime policy of 1-child limit. The New York Times 2013 Nov 15;Google ScholarThe Editorial Board. China’s new agenda [editorial]. The New York Times 2013 Nov 15.Google Scholar

2. Buckley, C. Hurdles for change to China’s one-child rule. The New York Times 2013 Nov 18.Google Scholar

3. Wang, F. Bringing an end to a senseless policy. The New York Times 2013 Nov 21.Google Scholar

4. The Communist Party of China Central Committee. Decision on major issues concerning comprehensively deepening reforms [authorized release in Chinese]; available from the Web site of the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-11/15/c_118164235.htm (last accessed 29 Nov 2013).

5. Greenhalgh, S. Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2008.Google Scholar

6. E.g., Gu, B, Li, J, eds. Ershiyi Shiji Zhongguo Shengyu Zhengce Lunzhen [The Debate over China’s Population Policy in the 21st Century]. Beijing: Social Science Academic Press; 2010;Google ScholarCheng, E, ed. Jibian “Xin Renkou Zhengce” [New Critical Debate on Population Policy]. Beijing: China Academy of Social Science; 2010.Google Scholar

7. Mo Y. Wa [Frog]. Shanghai: Shanghai Arts Press; 2009.

8. Yi, F. Daguo Kongchao [A Big Country in an Empty Nest: China’s Family Planning Program Derailed]. Hong Kong: Dafeng Press, 2007.Google Scholar

9. Peng, P, ed. Zhongguo Jihua Shengyu Quanshu [Complete Book of Family Planning in China]. Beijing: China Population Press; 1997, at 16–17.Google Scholar

10. Information Office of the State Council of P.R. China. Family Planning in China. Available at the official website of the white papers issues by the Chinese government, http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/familypanning/ (last accessed 18 Mar 2014).

11. Information Office of the State Council of P.R. China. Family Planning in China. Available at the official website of the white papers issues by the Chinese government, http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/familypanning/ (last accessed 18 Mar 2014).

12. See note 11, Information Office of the State Council of P.R. China.

13. Milwertz, CN. Accepting Population Control: Urban Chinese Women and the One-Child Family Policy. Surrey, UK: Curzon Press; 1997.Google Scholar

14. Nie, JB. Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion. Lanham, MD, and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield; 2005.Google Scholar

15. Tang, K, Long, X. Chaoyue weiji de xuanze: Renkou daode [Choice beyond Crisis: Ethics of the Population Question]. Changsha: Hunan Normal University Press; 1992Google Scholar, at 62. Emphasis added.

16. Nie, JB. The problem of coerced abortion in China and some ethical issues. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1999;8(4):463–79.Google Scholar

17. A case of forced induced birth in Ankang; available at http://baike.baidu.com/view/8791389.htm (last accessed 29 Nov 2013). Warning: this Web site contains graphic photos.

18. See note 14, Nie 2005, at 4.

19. See note 14, Nie 2005, at 4.

20. Mencius, book III, part A, at 2.

21. Mencius, book VII, part B, at 14.

22. Nie, JB. China’s birth control program through feminist lenses. In: Scully, JL, Baldwin-Ragaven, L, Fitzpatrick, P, eds. Feminist Bioethics: At the Centre, on the Margins. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2010:257–77.Google Scholar

23. Zhu, CZ, Li, SZ, Qiu, CR, Hu, P, Jin, AR. The Double Effects of the Family Planning Program on Chinese Women. Xi’an: Xi’an Jiaotong University Press; 1997. (Published bilingually in Chinese and English.)Google Scholar

24. Greenhalgh, S, Winckler, EA. Governing China’s Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics. Sanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 2005, at 3.Google Scholar

25. See note 24, Greenhalgh, Winckler 2005, at 249. Emphasis added.

26. See note 24, Greenhalgh, Winckler 2005, at 247–8. Emphasis original.

27. Nie, JB. State violence in twentieth-century China: Some shared features of the Japanese army’s atrocities and the Cultural Revolution’s terror. In: Kühnhardt, J, Takayama, M, eds. Menchenrechte, Kulturen und Gewalt: Ansaetze einer Interkulturellen Ethik [Human Rights, Cultures, and Violence: Perspectives of Intercultural Ethics]. Baden-Baden: Nomos; 2005:161–76.Google Scholar

28. E.g., http://house.21cn.com/news/news/2012/02/25/10930510.shtml (last accessed 18 Mar 2014). This site includes images of slogans posted up in Chinese villages.

29. White, T. China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005. New York: Cornell University Press; 2006, chap. 7.Google Scholar

30. Cameron, L, Erkal, N, Gangadharan, L, Meng, X. Little emperors: Behavioral impacts of China’s one-child policy. Science 2013;339:953–7, at 953.Google Scholar

31. Nie, JB. Non-medical sex-selective abortion in China: Ethical and social policy issues in the context of 40 million missing females. British Medical Bulletin 2001;98(1):720. doi:10.1093/bmb/ldr015;Google ScholarNie, JB. Limits of state intervention in sex-selective abortion: The case of China. Culture, Health & Sexuality 2010;12(2):205–19. doi:10.1080/13691050903108431.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

32. Diamond-Smith, N, Potts, M. Are the population policies of India and China responsible for the fertility decline? International Journal of Environmental Studies 2010;67(3):291301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Wang F. Does family planning policy matter? Dynamic evidence from China [draft paper] Available at http://www.iussp.org/sites/default/files/event_call_for_papers/Fei%20Wang_Family%20Planning%20Policy%20in%20China.pdf (last accessed 18 Mar 2014).

34. On governing. In: Analects II, at 3.

35. Nie, JB. Medical Ethics in China: A Transcultural Interpretation. London: Routledge; 2005, chap. 9, 10.Google Scholar These two chapters are the revised and expanded versions of two previous publications: Nie, JB. Cultural values embodying universal norms: A critique of a popular assumption about cultures and human rights. Developing World Bioethics 2005;5(2):251–7Google Scholar; and Nie, JB. Feminist bioethics and its language of human rights in the Chinese context. In: Tong, T, Donchin, A, Dodds, S, eds. Linking Visions: Feminist Bioethics, Human Rights and the Developing World. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield; 2004:7388.Google Scholar

36. Connelly, M. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cambridge, MA: Bellnap Press of Harvard University Press; 2008.Google Scholar

37. Weber, M. Politics as a vocation. In: Gerth, HH, Mills, CW, trans. and eds. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press; 1946, at 78.Google Scholar

38. Berlin, I. The Power of Ideas. Hardy, H, ed. London: Pimlico; 2001Google Scholar, at 23. On the genesis of this essay, see “Editor’s Preface,” at vi.