Q&A on China’s one-child policy

After China announced a proposal last week to allow two children per couple, it dismantled its longstanding and controversial one-child policy — which has been in place since the 1980s.

Staff writer Lobke van Meijel spoke with Assistant Professor of Sociology Yong Cai about the history and future of the policy now that the transformation proposal is waiting to be approved by China’s National People’s Congress.

The Daily Tar Heel: What kind of environment led China to implement the one-child policy?

Yong Cai: I think this policy came into life in 1980. After World War II, the mortality came down fast, fertility stayed at a high, so there was very much fear of a population boom. Basically, rapid population increase would not meet the parallel economic growth, so countries like China and India were very much in poverty and they would not even be able to feed themselves. To develop the economy, the population had to be taken into control.

DTH: What were the specific goals and consequences that limiting the population growth should have established?

YC: They had a very specific goal: trying to control the population. At the time, the total population was about 1 billion to 1.2 billion at the turn of the century. And there was the economic development goal: China, at the time, the GDP per capita was $250 per person, and they wanted to achieve a quadruple increase of the GDP by 2000.

DTH: How was the one-child policy enforced?

YC: It’s a very heavy-handed approach. So in China, basically your entire sexual life is under government surveillance. You have to get a permit to get a marriage just like everywhere else, but also you need to get a permit to be pregnant. It requires a certificate, a quorum to have the child delivered. They tried to monitor people’s menstrual cycles to enforce the policy. If you violated the policy you could lose your job, be fined or they would tear down your house ... They used all kinds of heavy-handed approaches. It just sounds crazy.

DTH: Do you think the one-child policy was effective in this regard?

YC: No. The science was bad; the idea for China to control its population, it had to bring down its fertility. But China’s fertility was already quite low at the 1980s. China’s high in 1970 was at 1.8 children per woman... So by introducing the one child policy, fertility actually did not change that much, it stayed roughly about 2.5 for the entire 1980s.

DTH: Did the Chinese government reach the economic goals it had set?

YC: Oh yes, China’s economy flew! It grew 10 percent per year for the last thirty-something years until, very recently, it has seen a slow down. The science however tried to link the economic development to population control, which was not good science to start with.

DTH: What positive and negative societal consequences arose from the one-child policy?

YC: I think it’s easier to speak to the negative side. Basically the negative side is that such a heavy-handed approach to control population had created many scars within society. What the Chinese government did was using very much a forceful force: tearing down people’s houses, not giving kids the opportunity they deserve to be in school, try to push people into not having children ... Also, in China, because of its agricultural and social traditions, many tend to have quite a strong desire to have a son ... The government pushed the people to make the choice between having a son or having a second child, so that choice in the end resulted in sex-selective abortion. This also created all kinds of other issues. As of now, 800,000 government officials are working on this policy, and that’s a huge waste of money.

DTH: How do these policies relate to the authoritarian government in China in general?

YC: I think it’s important to realize how Chinese government controls the society. They control the economy, but economy has been liberalizing. They also control the family; this is one part of the pillar supporting this authoritarian government. So if they do away with this very intrusive policy, I think this is a very important step for the Chinese government for liberalizing.

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