China's one Child Policy

Facing overpopulation, China decided to carry out one child policy in 1979. That is, every family can give birth to only one child except in some special situations. It consists of a set of regulations which includes restrictions on family size, late marriage childbearing and so on. According the demographic census in 2000, from 1979 to 2000, the policy has prevented 400 million children from being born effectively. However, the one child policy has much bad influence on China’s economic development and social stability. It has effects on several aspects such as sex ratios, children’s education and the aging of the population. Therefore I maintain it is not advisable to use the policy for long.

To begin with, China’s one child policy aggravates sex ratios imbalance. Adhering to the traditional and musty ideas, lots of Chinese civilians, especially in rural areas, believe that only males can support them when they are old and they have strength to work for the land. Last but not least, what the parents care about most is whether the child is male that can carry on the family line. So many civilians incline to bring up boys rather than girls. As a result, some people in cities use new technique to estimate whether the first pregnancy is male since they have only one chance to give birth to a child. If it is female, they are mostly likely to have an abortion. Some people in countryside are permitted to have a second child to help them work, “especially if the first one is female. So if the second one is female, the pregnancy often ‘disappears,’ allowing the couple to have another child in an attempt to have a son” (Therese Hesketh, et al.7), he also mentions:

The effect of the policy on the sex ratio has received much attention. The sex ratio at birth, defined as the proportion of male live births to female live births, ranges from 1.03 to 1.07 in industrialized countries.18 Since the onset of the one-child policy, there has been a steady increase in the reported sex ratio, from 1.06 in 1979, to 1.11 in 1988, to 1.17 in 2001.19 There are marked and well-documented local differences, with ratios of up to 1.3 in rural Anhui, Guangdong, and Qinghai provinces (8).

The results of sex ratios imbalance are serious. If the speed of imbalance is lasting, there are at least 12 million males can’t find wives in 2025. At that time, it will cause society to have more conflict and crisis.

Secondly, China’s one child policy makes it harder to educate children. With the policy carrying out, every family has one child, so parents and grandparents put all of their love on their only child. It is easy to spoil the child. Hence this child looks like a “leader” who can order other family members to serve her or him, and no one can share parents or grandparents’ love or substances with her or him, just like there is no one to play with. On that account, the child can feel conceited, lonely and selfish. Moreover,