During a recent telephone conversation with my mom, she mentioned that few months ago she started receiving a monthly payment (about 50 RMB) for the fact that I am the only child in family. But if my parents wouldn’t comply with the one child policy, they – as urban residents belonging to Han majority – would have to pay big fines.

Everyone knows that China has implemented a family planning policy promoting the small family culture – preferably one child only. Strictly speaking, however, there are many different exceptions from this rule that eventually exempt from it 60% of population.

For example, rural residents can have a second child, especially if the first one is girl or has physical disability or mental illness… Putting females in the same category with disabled is telling, huh?

Another group benefiting from relaxation is ethnic minorities. So, in the same province there can co-exist three different quotas: one child allowed for Han Chinese, two children – for ethnic minorities, and even three children for ethnic minorities living in remote areas.

In this respect it’s appropriate to quote the letter of one blog reader describing the situation in Guangxi:

… when the government labeled millions of Guangxi people as members of the Zhuang minority, they at first objected vociferously – why, they were Chinese! Always had been! They had been Chinese for millennia!

It was proven using census and tax records, plus family genealogies, that they were, in fact, originally Zhuang, though most of them could not even speak the Zhuang language. When they found out that the one-child policy did not apply to minorities, they embraced their “new” status for all the very best of traditional reasons – specifically, so that even if the first, second, third child were a girl, they could always try again for a boy.

Besides the abnormal sex ratio, there is another demographic consequence with which China will have to deal in the upcoming years – the so-called “4-2-1” problem, when the only child is expected in the future to economically support 6 people (2 parents and 4 grandparents). This problem gave birth to another exception from the one-child policy – namely, couple in which both spouses are only children themselves are often allowed to have a second child.

But how is the policy enforced for those who are not lucky to fall into one of the aforementioned categories? Actually, every province and municipality has its own annual quota for the number of children that can be born. And they also can choose the way in which they ensure that the figures are not exceeded. It can be anything from fines to property confiscation, from social pressure to forced abortions and sterilizations.

Sometimes, it can take grotesque forms. Thus, in last April the authorities of Puning launched an “Iron Fist Campaign”.

In April 2010, a task force of approximately 600 local officials targeted 9,559 women who had violated the country’s one-child policy. The women were required to report to government clinics to undergo sterilization. Family members of those women who had refused sterilization were detained indefinitely until the women complied with the procedure. In some cases, the women themselves were detained. Over the course of the 20-day campaign, 1,377 people were detained. From April to June, over 9,000 women were reported to have been sterilized as a result of the campaign.

Internet is full of other scary stories – especially referring to the early 1980’s when the one-child policy just started. They say that in some cases even women at the last week of pregnancy were forcefully taken to hospitals for abortions. There they would be given injections causing death of fetus and its expulsion from uterus. If for some reason, however, the child was born alive – the second injection would come into his/her head.

You can call me the fan of conspiracies, but I would like to hear your hypotheses for one curious statistical fact. As one would naturally expect – giving birth to twins is not punishable by law. On the other hand, it has impact on numbers. So, let me cite the research “The comparison of twinning rates between urban and rural areas in China”:

The MZ [monozygotic] twinning rates in urban and rural areas were 2.36 pairs and 2.11 pairs per 1000 deliveries respectively, significantly lower than that in most studied populations.

Compare it to statistics claiming that the average identical twin rates in the world are 3.5 per 1000 […] this figure being universal and random. I will only note that the percentage of monozygotic twins is not influenced by hormonal treatment or artificial fertilization.

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Let me conclude with more optimistic figures. It appears that 76% of Chinese people approve of the one-child policy. :cool:

Regarding it I will only point out that agreeing with policy [for others] does not mean not wanting more than one child [for yourself]. Especially, if you get such opportunity! To check it, I used my never-ending source of statistical information – dating site “ChineseLoveLinks”.

I counted the number of profiles among women of Asian ethnicity, living in China, who are 25 to 30 years old, have a child and check the reason of being on site as “looking for marriage”. One of the questions in profile is “Do you want more children?” and the possible answers are: “Yes”, “Not sure” and “Not”.

Well, the ratio of “Yes” to “Not” answers was 378 to 77. It was not different and even slightly higher than the ratio among Asian women who are not from China (36 to 10) and non-Asian women on this site (121 to 33).

Fan of conspiracies, Crystal Tao