Jess S asked:
I was considering doing a reaserach paper for my English class on China’s one-child policy and the negative effect on it’s population of girls.
However, I thought I recently that they decided to reverse this law and it is no longer in use or changed in some way…but the only websites I can find haven’t been updated for a long time.
Does anyone know if China is still following this law or not, and if so, are girls still being discriminated against?
they do not do that anymore and there is way more males than there is females…
Comment by Assad — February 4, 2008 @ 8:46 am
I remember when they started that law and the controversy around it. Their population had reached a dangerous level for the world if you don’t mind my saying so. I can’t remember exactly what the argument was, but I did approve because there was no other way. I don’t believe their doing it anymore or atleast their not exercizing the law as strict as they once did. They do offer lieniency towards it.
Comment by josh03 — February 4, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
They are building an army…
Comment by jay — February 8, 2008 @ 3:08 am
I know it is (supposedly) illegal in China to have a sonogram for the purpose of finding out the sex of the child. It is well-known that female fetuses are more frequently aborted, and baby girls are left at orphanages or abandonded to die. This is mostly in the countryside rather than the major cities. However, because the one-child policy started about 20 to 30 years ago, there are now way more men than women, and many men, mostly poor and from the countryside, cannot find a wife.I believe the one-child policy is still officially in effect. I can ask my husband and in-laws (all Chinese).
Below is one article, it’s a couple of years old.
Comment by Herding C — February 11, 2008 @ 12:18 am
The policy has been lifted only for certain couples; the general national policy still restricts them to one child each. For couples in which both parties are only children, the government is encouraging them to have two. This way, one child will not bear the sole burden of looking after four grandparents, etc. Even this exception only applies to couples in certain regions of China. The policies vary by region, both officially and in the informal enforcement.
Comment by Laura C — February 11, 2008 @ 9:59 am
I used the YSearch tool to look up “sex selection of children in china” and found the link below to an interesting PhD thesis. Just below it on the match list was an article about China criminalizing sex-selected abortions in 2005. The issue of One Child, begun by Chinese government to control their exploding populations has run head-on against the thousands-year-old tradition of valuing boys over girls, thus the practice of sex-selected abortion of fetuses (if you can only have one, parents choose to have a boy because it’s supposedly luckier in Chinese culture). This really has unbalanced the population ratio in China and, yes, girls are still discriminated against.
Whether or not you agree with a woman’s right to choose, sex-selected abortion in China as a response to the One-Child policy sure has created more problems than it was introduced to solve.
Comment by Susan K — February 13, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
Yes the law is still in affect, and girls are still heavily discriminated against. A large, well mostly all girls, are left in orphanages.
Comment by Lauren C — February 15, 2008 @ 4:37 am
Hey ,I am the one you really want. I AM A CHINESE.I know a lot about this policy cause I am a victim under this nasty policy.You know,the CCP changed a bit of this policy.If the couple both come from one-child family ,they can harbour two babies.In Chinese tradition,to bear a boy can help the family keep its pace ,a girl is nothing but a vehicle to combine to another prosperous strain.
If you want to know more information I’d like to give you my two e-mail boxes
Comment by wfypku — February 17, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
The one-child policy is still practiced in China, but the government has loosened the law a bit to allow a young couple with both the husband and the wife coming from one-child families to have two children. The government does this mainly out of considerations to avoid some of the social problems coming along with the policy.
Girls are discriminated in China not because of the laws but because of traditional or cultural biases. So when you want to answer your question, it’s important to distinguish what laws can do from what are the social/cultural values.
Comment by l g — February 19, 2008 @ 12:26 am
I have to say that yes, China’s one-child policy is still in effect. There was a mild drive to adjust it because of the statistics showing the majority of males vs. females, but that fizzled out a few days ago with an official proclamation that nothing would change.
China does allow some families to have more than one child, notably some minority groups and those in the boonies. The minority groups because (officially) they want to support the minorities and (unofficially) many of the minority people are marrying Han, like white people in the US, and having more children waters down the minority bloodline. This is what is happening in Nepal and Xianjin. In the boonies it is supposedly ok because they need the help for farming. What is happening there is that all the farmers are coming to the cities to find work because the farming conditions suck and they can’t support themselves on government rations.
The disparity between male and female babies isn’t so visible in the cities, they tend to have a better balance between men and women, but it really becomes evident in the countryside where not only superstition, but also inheritence laws and whatnot encourage male babies. A woman would have a very hard time supporting her family while a man would have a much easier time. Unfortuantely at that point it’s economics.
There is going to be a crackdown soon, at least the government says there will be, on families that ignore the one-child policy. I work at a school where many wealthy families send their kids, and most have a brother or sister, all the parents have to do is pay a fine and then be financially responsible for the second or third child for their edcation and health care (every one after the first is not supported by the government). Supposedly they will be fining families quite a bit of money, but we’ll see.
Comment by Chris A — February 22, 2008 @ 7:51 am