One Child Policy of China: Socio-Economic Effects

With China’s one-child policy in play for so many years, it has had a big impact on the overall population. As it’s found typical that married couples in urban areas

One of the family-related reforms during the late 19th/ early 20th century is the shifting toward monogamy and away from polygamy. Because there was a movement where the Jiating yanjiu promoted xiao jiating, independent family, instead of the traditional da jiting, joint family, during the New Culture Movement, there seems to be no need for concubine or female servant since marriage was supposed to be love based and not on the family’s arrangements. The husband and wife come together with their own free will, there is more emotional satisfaction, which lead the married couple “more productive, and their increased productivity, in turn, made China stronger” ( Glosser 120). Liao Shu’An, a member of jiating yanjiu, offered eight rules as the

Parents hold low expectations for their daughters and teach them to to be obedient at a young age because sons were seen as a greater asset. Filial piety, “the important virtue and primary duty of respect, obedience, and care for one's parents and elderly family members,” plays a key role in a parent’s preference for males (Dictionary.com). Daughters are usually married off, whereas sons not only carry on the family’s household name, but are expected to take care of their parents in the future. It is a repaid debt for the amount of work parents put into providing food, shelter, clothes, and education. Although, it is expected of parents to care for their children, China only allows one child per family -- unless the parents are granted a permit. Therefore, parents continue to exercise sex-selective abortion because of filial piety and the mindset that sons dominate over daughters. In Chinese, filial piety is expressed by the character 孝 (pinyin: xiào). The character xiao is made up of an upper and a lower part. The first part is derived from the character lao (老, pinyin: lǎo), which means ‘old’. The second part is the character 子 (pinyin: zi), which means ‘son’” (Teon, China-journal). The favoritism of males over females is rooted back to the term itself; hence why parents believe that the amount of time and money spent, should be invested on a

Moso society, better known as Na, is a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China. For decades, they have implemented a matrilineal system in their culture. Matrilineal system is defined as a system in which their descendants are traced using their mothers’ lineage. Since Moso society applied the matrilineal system in their culture, there are several implications and characteristics that can be analyzed from that point. One important feature of matrilineal is called “walking marriage”. There is no traditional marriage in Moso culture, so in a family there are neither husbands nor wives. In walking marriage the partners do not live in the same households, as during midnights the man who has received permission to visit the woman comes to spend the whole night with her and return to his home early in the morning. From certain aspects, walking marriage has positive effects towards Moso’s family structure, child gender preference and gender equality. This essay analyzes about how those aspects are benefited by the walking marriage.

After a large increase in population, the Chinese government decided to step in and create the one-child policy. To enforce their new policy, the government issued high taxes and fines for couples who violated the policy. If a couple’s first child is a girl, they can request to have another child but only if it has been five years and they have been considered eligible. That also contributes to the culture’s preference for male offspring. Male offspring can carry on the family name so to a culture that holds strong family values it is ideal to have a son. This want for male children is causing China many problems. China is now facing a gender gap that has started to affect the Chinese economy. By the year 2035, twenty percent of China’s population will be over the age of 65. That is twenty percent of the workforce gone, with no one to replace them. Leaving all the economic pressure on the younger

Chen, X. (2004). The Social Impact of China's One-Child Policy. Harvard Asia Pacific Review, 75.

The one-child policy rule in China created huge controversy for many parents. The one-child policy rule was first implemented in 1979, and later diminished in 2015. 36% of the population felt the one-child policy was not a good idea because the families who were affected by the policy were not allowed to have more than one child, and if they did, they would face possible fines or they would just abort the extra child. China’s one-child policy was not a good idea because it limited families, who could only produce males, to one child.

China’s One Child policy has been called inhumane, harsh, and unnecessarily cruel considering that other countries have been successful in controlling their population without abducting babies, denying illegal second children an identity or forcing abortions and sterilizations. Since the One-Child Policy has been effective in slowing the growth of China’s population even though it has been heartbreaking to many families, it is important to analyze the effects of the One-Child Policy on the people and economy of China to see if it was worth the issues it caused. The One-Child Policy created by the Chinese Communist Party, started in 1979 and ended in late 2015. China’s population was at 969 million and was very quickly approaching 1 billion,

Overpopulation continues to be the leading driver of hunger, desertification, species depletion, and a range of social problems across the planet. China is the world's most populous nation with around 1.357 billion people and India, with 1.252 billion, is catching up fast. Combined, the two nations share more than one-third of the world's population. Both of the countries are grappling with huge populations and the problems that arise with them, but they have chosen to employ drastically different ways of coping. The population of China has become managed as a result of the One Child Policy. Fifty years ago, China was the most populous country in the world, and while it still is, the population has not grown as much as it would have if the

In 1980, China implemented the one-child policy. This policy was initially meant to be temporary, and since it was instituted, it is estimated that 400 million births have been prevented. One of the goals of the Chinese one-child policy was to ensure that the population growth did not pass up economic development. It was also meant to ease natural resource challenges and environmental imbalances, which were caused by China’s quickly expanding population (Connett). Even though it seemed as if the policy was a great idea at the time, it caused many issues such as: the country’s sex ratio became extremely unbalanced, the number of female abortions dramatically increased, and after the first child, subsequent children were hidden from the authorities.

Yet several specters haunt China. To continue economic growth, China’s economy will have to fundamentally shift away from its current orientation toward exports and grow based on its own consumption. Other structural challenges, from taxes and regulation to intellectual property and the rule of law, all must be reformed if China’s economic growth is to continue. China’s leaders will also have to manage an unprecedented level of urbanization, with an expected 400 million new urban residents by 2050. Just as daunting, China’s population is rapidly ageing, which will become a tremendous economic challenge given the effects of China’s One Child Policy and its Bachmann-beloved lack of a Social Security program. Beyond economic and demographic challenges,

China’s one-child policy was implicated in China in the late 1970’s, during a time where China’s population was equivalent to about the quarter of the world’s population (CD, 2017). The Chinese government thought it was essential to put in place a policy that would aid the economic well being of the country and to improve the living standards, by controlling the rapid population growth. This policy meant that it was illegal for couples to have more than one child, disobeying this law would cause controversy and substantial punishment for the offenders. This policy caused major consequences that the Chinese government didn’t account for including, major gender imbalances, the little emperor syndrome and an aging population that can not be

Traditionally families were defined by their faithfulness and conventional sex roles. The roles of men and women were structured according to the traditional family roles. It was believed that the father’s role was to work in the office the whole day as the mother stays at home to attend to house hold chores. For many years traditional marriage was the cornerstone of almost all societies, an important institution for the passing on of values and taking care of children. That was then, the present is experiencing changing roles, and fathers opt for staying at home as mothers pursue their careers.

Traditionally, an ideal Chinese family consisted of as many generations of the male line and as many male siblings as possible. By 1982, when the strict policy was in place, a family survey in Beijing reported that among 773 married women, 55% of them preferred to have one child, while 37% of them preferred to have two (Zheng and Me 1987). A survey of only children aged 20-30 years old in Shanghai revealed about half of the respondents wished to have two children and mean a desirable number of children was 1.46 (Gong 2006). More than ¾ of the respondents said that it doesn’t matter about having a son or a daughter. With equal education and more open employment opportunities, the traditional reasons for male preference are no longer as applicable in the major cities like Shanghai, where in 2000 there was a regular sex ratio of 106 boys to 100 girls (Nie and Wyman 2005). This shift towards accepting a norm of one or two children, and having less of a gender preference is a

Further, the parental factors are also considerable reasons influencing their children’s marriage. In modern society, people enjoy rights of free love; however, some parents are still conservative, and they believe their children’s spouses should be chosen by them. Consequently, it leads to the parents do not like their sons or daughters in law. In addition, the problem about infertility is another reason causing divorce because china is a traditional county, and the parents make much account of carrying on a family line. If women with the disease of infertility will be discriminated against by their husbands’ parents; also, some hot words and radical behaviors from parents will detrimental to the conjugal relations. Furthermore, the gender discrimination, valuing the male children only, happens in the family, and the female children lack love and concern form their grandparents so there are some inconsistencies between the parents and their daughter-in-low. To solve the divorce problems which are caused by couples’ parents, the parents should treat others as equal, and try to change their prejudiced and inflexible thought.