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  • On this episode of China Uncensored:

  • China ends its one-child policy!

  • Sort of.

  • Hello and welcome to China Uncensored, I'm your host, Chris Chappell.

  • Big news out of China last weekas explained in this video by British state-run media BBC.

  • (cheers)

  • Wow. I guess they're putting all their investigative resources into Sherlock.

  • Well, ending an unpopular and draconian population control policy is certainly cause for celebration.

  • "Now we have the introduction of a new policy: One couple, two children."

  • Wait. So they're ending the one-child policy...by making it a two-child policy instead?

  • You know, the one-child policy was never supposed to be a permanent thing.

  • It was established in 1979 after a huge population boom in China.

  • After the Communist Party began its rule in 1949,

  • the population of China almost doubled in 30 years.

  • And this wasn't a coincidence.

  • Mao Zedong encouraged people to have lots of kids.

  • That's partially because he was concerned about nuclear war.

  • He said in a 1957 speech that it didn't matter if half of China's population was killed,

  • because there were so many people, they could just repopulate.

  • At the time, the Communist Party even banned birth control.

  • But eventually, officials started worrying about overpopulation.

  • So they created the one-child policy.

  • It was a massive social engineering project designed to counter

  • the previous social engineering project that got out of hand.

  • It's also not precisely a one-child policy.

  • There are so many exceptions that two thirds of Chinese people are already allowed to have

  • a second child,

  • for example, farmers whose first child is a girl.

  • So what's the big deal about changing the one-child policy now?

  • For more on this, we go to former one-child and copy editor Shelley Zhang.

  • Chris.

  • Shelley, most people outside China have a negative view of the one child policy,

  • but some people also think it was a "necessary evil"

  • to stop overpopulation in China.

  • Was the policy a success?

  • The Chinese government says that the policy prevented 400 million births,

  • but demographers are pretty skeptical.

  • In fact, it's looking more and more like the one child policy was completely unnecessary.

  • Really. Completely unnecessary?

  • Well, the biggest drop in China's birth rate happened before the one-child policy.

  • In 1970, the government started running a propaganda campaign to encourage people to

  • get married later and have fewer children.

  • Family size dropped by half in just 10 years.

  • Researchers now think that the birth rate would have continued to drop naturally as

  • China's economy improved.

  • That was even confirmed by a secret government experiment.

  • So are officials changing the one-child policy now because it's clear it's not necessary?

  • Well, they're changing it because the one-child policy caused a demographic disaster.

  • China is now dealing with not having enough young workers to support the elderly.

  • This sounds like a huge amount of pressure on the next generation.

  • Yeah, and because of the preference for boys over girls,

  • there are now 30 million more men than women.

  • So how is the one-child policy enforced, anyway?

  • It's unevenly implemented through a massive bureaucracy.

  • Quotas are set by the central government, and enforced by local family planning commissions.

  • Wow. So what happens to people who violate the policy?

  • So it varies pretty widely.

  • You can be fined anywhere from a few thousand dollars to 6 to 8 times your annual income.

  • In some cases, if you can't pay, officials will force you to have an abortion, or sterilize

  • you.

  • Remember Feng Jianmei?

  • In 2012, she was seven months pregnant with her second child, and couldn't pay the fine.

  • Officials captured her and forced her to have an abortion.

  • A photo of Feng with her stillborn baby went viral on social media,

  • causing an outcry against family planning enforcement.

  • From what I remember, Feng lived in a rural area,

  • so she should have been able to have a second child.

  • Oh, yeah, she was eligible.

  • But she hadn't applied for a birth permit before getting pregnant.

  • So because she didn't have a birth permit, she was fined,

  • and because she couldn't pay the fine, she had a forced abortion?

  • Yes.

  • Under the one-child policy there have been more than 330 million abortions and almost

  • 200 million sterilizations.

  • And if Feng's daughter had been born, she wouldn't be able to get a residence permit.

  • That means she couldn't go to school, couldn't get a job, couldn't even go to the doctor.

  • There are 6.5 million "undocumented" Chinese in that exact situation.

  • You know, I think about this sometimes because after I was born in China, my mother got a

  • government-mandated IUD (intrauterine device).

  • Even though IUDs are supposed to have a 99% effectiveness rate, she got pregnant.

  • So if we hadn't already moved to America by then,

  • my sister probably wouldn't be alive today.

  • That's really heavy.

  • So it sounds like changing the one-child policy will be a good thing?

  • Right now, it looks like family planning commissions will still exist to enforce the two-child

  • policy.

  • And a big reason is money.

  • A lot of local governments make a substantial part of their revenue from family planning

  • fines, especially in poorer areas.

  • There's even a saying that, for money,

  • "Big cities depend on land, small towns depend on birth planning."

  • Some estimate that fines have made more than 300 billion dollars since the one-child policy

  • started.

  • Will the new two-child policy help the demographic crisis the one-child policy caused?

  • It will take decades,

  • because the birth rate probably won't increase fast enough.

  • When the two-child policy was piloted back in 2013,

  • only 1 in 20 eligible couples applied to have a second child.

  • You know, in the end, stopping the one-child policy is good PR.

  • Most people outside China will probably think that it's a great thing.

  • But what they won't realize is that the underlying system isn't changing.

  • Chris?

  • Thanks, Shelley.

  • So the Communist Party is swapping the one-child policy for a two-child policy.

  • But that's not going to change the fact that the Party is still telling people how many

  • children they are allowed to have.

  • So will this new social engineering project

  • designed to counter the previous social engineering project

  • created to fix the first social engineering project work?

  • What do you think? Leave your comments below.

  • Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored and check out our Facebook page.

  • I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.

  • Ai Weiwei is well known for criticizing Chinese censorship through his art.

  • And now he is accusing LEGO of censoring him

  • because of alleged pressure from the Chinese regime.

  • So Ai Weiwei handled the rejection in the mature, adult manner that one would expect from the eccentric artist.

  • The US guided missile destroyer, the USS Lassen,

  • sailed within 12 nautical miles of Chinese territory

  • as long as you consider artificial islands built on submerged reefs part of China's territory,

  • which no besides China does.

On this episode of China Uncensored:

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中国、一人っ子政策を二人っ子政策に変更|中国無修正 (China Changes One-Child Policy to Two-Child Policy | China Uncensored)

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    噹噹 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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