China's one child policy

Essay by samuraidickCollege, UndergraduateA-, May 2006

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In 1979, China's one child policy was established by Deng Xiaoping, who was a Chinese leader at that time. Since China has been faced with population explosion issues, China's one child policy is to limit China's population growth. Basically, this policy limits couples to having only one child, and imposes people who have more than two children to pay a fine. This policy is really controversial due to several reasons. First, there has never been any other case of the government controlling its population in social history. Thus, we hardly can predict what will actually happen after applying the policy. Second, the issue of population explosion is not only a problem in China but also the issue of all the people in the world. Will every government in the world eventually have to control their population numbers? This is not the question for the far future, but for the quite near future.

Now, it has been about 25 years since China's one child policy has been applied (and it's still enforcing people not to have more than one child.) There are various results of the policy, such as sexual discrimination and aging issues.

According to Therese Hesketh, Li Lu, and Zhu Wei Xing (2005), the sex ratio has been unusually shifted in China since china's one child policy has been applied. Male birth rates have been by far larger than female's even though sex-selective abortion is illegal in China. As many different cultures do tend to favor male children as well, especially in the rural area of China, male child is essential manpower for their household. For example, only male child can inherit properties from parents, and male child can work, such as cultivating. (Vanessa L Fong, 2002) There's an exception to China's one child policy--- in rural areas,