One-child policy Quotes

“The policy led to sex-selective abortions or infanticide targeting girls, because of a centuries-old social preference for boys.”

“When you create a system where you would shrink the size of a family and people would have to choose, then people would ... choose sons.”

“As a result of the one-child policy and the tradition of male heirs, there is currently a national gender imbalance. In China, there are 30 million more men than women.”

“Female infanticide and sex-selective abortions are one of the many unintended consequences of the one-child policy. For every 118 boys in China, there are now only 100 girls.”

“The fertility policy in China is enforced by a complex system of financial disincentives for excess fertility, including reduction of land allotments, denial of public services, and fines for unauthorized births.”

“A consensus has emerged that the sex ratio distortion in China is due to prenatal discrimination against female conceptions. This consensus is based primarily on evidence from fertility surveys, field work and census data.”

“A boom in second children was exactly what the central government was hoping for when it announced the lifting of the world’s most controversial family planning scheme, commonly known as the “one-child policy” in October 2015.”

“In Guangxi Province, where family-planning regulations are strictly enforced, parents trying for sons sell their baby girls on the black market. At the time, 80 percent of trafficked babies were girls, according to a Chinese academic.”

“Why did we follow such a wrong policy for so long? The Chinese government doesn’t want to admit it’s wrong. It says the policy was right but now is the time to change. If it just says the policy was wrong, the public will become angry.”

“In families that already had one child, the births of additional children—in violation of the one-child policy—were often undocumented, leading to many problems later on for those children as they struggled to receive an education or find work.”

“It’s not just a problem of whether you permit ordinary people to have one or two kids. It’s about returning their reproductive rights to them. In over 200 countries and regions around the world, which of them nowadays controls people’s reproduction like this?”

“Was the policy a success? It depends on who you ask. Supporters say it worked: since the late 1970s, China’s economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. That would not have been possible, they say, without controlling population growth.”

“It has led to a huge gender imbalance in China, where there are now 34.9 million more males than females, according to the latest census data released in May. The census, conducted in 2020, showed that the sex ratio of the total population was 105.1 males to 100 females – about the same as a decade ago.”

“For 36 years, the ruling Communist Party enforced an extreme form of social engineering to regulate birthrates. It was part of a strategy to simultaneously grow the economy and improve living standards. It was easier to increase income per head, the policymakers decided, when there weren’t so many heads.”

“For China’s leaders, the controls were a triumphant demonstration of the party’s capacity to reshape even the most intimate dimensions of citizens’ lives. But they bred intense resentment over the brutal intrusions involved, including forced abortions and crippling fines, especially in the countryside.”

“As an old Chinese saying goes, none but the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. As a member of a generation that experienced and, in fact, sacrificed to make the family planning policy a success, we know only too well that it is a sacrifice that had to be made for the betterment of the country and the Chinese people.”

“The purpose of the family-planning policy was not to make hundreds of families lose their only child, but this situation did occur. If the government does not address this, the situation will only get worse.
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“For more than 35 years, China enforced a controversial one-child policy initially imposed to halt a population explosion. Its replacement, a two-child limit, failed to result in a sustained surge in the number of births as the high cost of raising children in Chinese cities deterred many couples from starting families.”

“As of 2015, after 35 years of severe restrictions, the demographic implications for the 150 million families in China of having only one child were becoming increasingly apparent and the government was forced to act in an attempt to, at least in part, correct an upcoming demographic disaster for the rapidly ageing country.”

“The problem for China of not having children must be very painful, because the pyramid is then inverted and a child has to bear the burden of his father, mother, grandfather and grandmother. And this is exhausting, demanding, disorientating. It is not the natural way. I understand that China has opened up possibilities on this front.”