Two is one too many
9/7/12 18:34![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpolitics[WARNING: very gory NSFW pic, please don't open if you don't want to see dead fetuses!] This article includes a picture of a young mother on the hospital bed, the corpse of her 7-month old stillborn baby laid lifeless beside her after the lethal injection she was given by the local family planning authorities. This is a moment that millions of Chinese families have gone through in recent years, after failing to comply with the One Child policy that's aimed to curb population growth in the most populous country. Pictures like these have circulated around the Internet, being uploaded by families who've endured such massacre, and have caused a huge outcry. Comments vary, but the general sense is expressed by one that made me the most impression: "They say that's what the Japanese devils and the Nazi used to do. Except this is happening now, and it's not a separate incident... These people should be executed..." Another one said, "This is pure murder, plain and simple. These are not real human beings. This country is full of monsters".
Until recently, the drama of this family and millions like it would've gone unnoticed and ignored, especially if it happened in remote rural areas like this. It would've been just part of the statistics. But now the broad online echo is an example of a rising activeness within the Chinese society, showing how much the One Child policy is hated by the Chinese. Despite all the blackout that the state is attempting, there's an increasing number of outlets and ways to express one's position in China. The authorities just can't tap all of it. They're trying to keep the whole thing under a close supervision, so they must be already well aware of the widespread discontent with such policies.
News and sights like these tend to spread like wildfire these days, which shows that people are more informed about blatant violations of human rights than ever before. The Chinese internet domains are unable to cope with all of this flood of information, no matter how hard they try to block it. People have started talking openly about these issues, and the consequences of the One Child policy are being scrutinized very thoroughly - like this tendency of parents preferring newborn boys to girls and making selective abortions, which results in a heavy gender tilting of the Chinese demographics, with potentially dangerous repercussions.
Pictures like these that went viral on the Internet, have prompted the government to seek responsibility from "the guilty". Several doctors from that hospital were fired, and the local authorities issued an official apology. But this in no way addressed the cause of the problem, only did some damage control about one of its symptoms. Administrative sanctions like these would hardly appease people who've suffered a lot under this policy.
What's more, turns out this mother was continuously verbally abused by the authorities after the incident, because she had dared to speak with foreign media. She's treated as a traitor in her village, her relatives are constantly followed in case they'd think of giving more interviews for the media, and pressured by their community in all possible ways. Meanwhile, her husband, the father of the "legally killed" baby, has gone missing, suspicions being that he's been arrested. That's what "open debate" means for the Chinese authorities.
The thing is, there were administrative punishments after this case only because shit had hit the fan and the story had surfaced in the public space. There are many secrets left uknown on this case, like how the negotiations between the family and the government are going, what compensations would be granted to the mother, etc. Sure there would be some compensations to shut her mouth. But the word has been spread now, thanks to the Internet. With more people learning how to express their opinion in a society where such a thing was deemed unthinkable until very recently, the issue about the One Child policy could now really get into the agenda. Until now, stories like this were left locked behind the walls of the homes of ordinary people, remaining a family secret and a personal tragedy. A couple years ago, a public discussion of this sort would've been impossible. And things would've continued as if nothing had happened.
But now the game has changed. The government-run media cannot control the flow of information as they used to. What's more, in order to stay in touch and be competitive with their online counterparts, they're compelled to open up and start reporting on controversial topics like this one. But let's not be fooled. The Internet hasn't changed China fundamentally. Online censorship is still pretty efficient in that country.
The One Child policy has never been too loved in China, although many people have learned to live with it over the years. In the 80s for example, many local committees directly intervened in family planning, forcing millions of abortions upon families. We're talking numbers the sort of 13 million abortions on a yearly basis. And mind you, these numbers have dropped in recent years, because the authorities prefer to impose heavy fines on violators of this law, rather than performing the killing of fetuses. The Economist reported that this way they've collected over 300 billion dollars since the 80s. If families fail to pay the fine, the child is not given a registration document, which deprives them of basic rights like free education, health care, etc. It's treated like a non-citizen. The fines vary from town to town. A Shanghai family would be fined well over 15 grand for a second kid, the fine increasing, the wealthier the family is, and for some of the high-class families (those without connections) it could reach millions of dollars.
This particular family had to pay 6300 dollars. They had to choose between keeping the baby and paying the fine, or having it killed. They already had a 5 year old kid. They couldn't collect the money (with a monthly salary of $600, that's understandable). So the husband went to a coal mine to try make some more money. But then the local family planning committee visited the mother. She managed to escape, but after a 3-day pursuit she was finally found, several men dragged her to the hospital, blindfolded her and forced her to sign an abortion agreement. After the injection, she gave birth to a stillborn girl.
The version of the local authorities is that she voluntarily decided to end her pregnancy after "a long persuasion", and eventually she admitted she couldn't pay the fine. Of course they'd say that. Meanwhile, the woman's family denies this version.
This brings us to the question if this is just a separate incident, caused by a violent authoritative local ruler who got carried away with abusing their powers, or is it a systematic insjustice inflicted upon thousands and even millions of people by those of high position who've been above the most basic principles of morality for so long that they'd often jump across the line of humanity. Frankly, I'd bet on the latter.
One of the reasons for the cruelty of the local authorities is the fact that the One Child policy is full with loopholes, which doesn't allow the fulfillment of the quotas adopted by the government. The official data shows that in 2007 this policy practically applied only to less than 40% of the population. Bribery is widespread, and personal connections are crucial for mitigating the fines. The policy is implemented differently in different regions. In the big cities it's followed strictly, where entire school classes consist of children without brothers and sisters; while in the rural areas many families are allowed to have a second child, especially if the first one is a girl. The ethnic minorities can even have a third one. Some Muslim families have 5-6. Which means that in practice this policy mostly applies to the cities. On the other hand, this gives the government an excuse to justify the occasional drastic measures it tends to take against these practices.
The tragedy in this particular case is that this family is from a small village, their first kid is a girl, so they should be allowed to have a second one. But their "transgression" is that they didn't have an address registration in that village. They had hoped to trick the system, seeing how the local authorities do not react in case of such violations by their fellow villagers. But they underestimated the situation.
This incident casts some light on the barbaric practices that've remained unknown for so long. The international community only used to view this policy as a mechanism for population control, which in a country like China does seem to make a lot of sense. But in practice it's much more than that. Turns out the forced abortions and the tendentious girl abortions are widespread. So now hopefully the public reaction will be much more adequate.
But frankly, I remain skeptical about this, at least in the short term. In reality we haven't witnessed even a hint of improvement in the legal and moral norms on part of the Chinese authorities. I don't believe a single case, no matter how huge the public outrcry, would make the government make a radical re-thinking of this policy. But in the long run, sooner or later it'll have to be reviewed, and the reason is not so much PR, the Internet, or anything else related to the public. No. The reason is purely demographic, and practical. China is now standing in front of a looming demographic problem because of its aging population, and the gender disparity. Ironically, they might soon find themselves in a situation where they'll actually have to think about increasing their population. But will they have the demographic capacity to do so? The structure of their society is severely damaged already, so that'll be tough.
As for abortions, although they've been allowed in China since the 50s, they were never a widespread practice at the beginning of the One Child policy. Obviously this policy has been controversial since day one. And yet there are many arguments in favor of it. Because let's face it - there are too many people packed in a too narrow space. That's why all of this is tolerated, although there are sometimes shocking incidents like this one.
In theory, forced abortions and sterilization are banned by law in China, but in practice they're tolerated. The authorities never miss a chance to mention that the policy has prevented 400 million additional births, and that in a country of 1.3 billion. The critics of the policy counter with the argument that this has brought a staggering imbalance between the sexes, because more people prefer to have a son rather than daughter (for cultural reasons), and they make selective abortions. So they've reached a point where the ratio is 120 to 100 in favor of the boys.
As a matter of fact, the claim is that violence in birth control has dropped considerably in recent decades. In the 80s and 90s, if a rural family had a third kid (provided they were allowed two), they had to become fugitives, failing to pay the "ransom". The authorities would seize their property, including their home, food and livestock, and sometimes even burn the house to the ground along with all the crops. Now this has changed, but just because of the economy. The reason is that China has been aging for... well, ages. The shortage of labor force is a big issue, and the social security system is under a severe pressure. Forecasts are unanimous that the share of young people will continue to plummet, and that of the elderly would soar. And the economy cannot hold for too long.
So it's again the economy, stupid. This situation is forcing the change in a natural way. Now we could hear of cases in cities like Shanghai and Beijing where families where neither parent has any siblings, are allowed to have two kids. Sometimes they're even encouraged to do so, especially if both parents have university degrees and are well paid at work. Now the biggest obstacle to having two kids (at least in the cities), is not government control, but the more expensive living standard. Which, I think, is a much more natural means of population control.
So the big turnover that many human rights organizations and millions of Chinese families have been striving for, could come sooner than we expect. And it won't be caused by some moral motives, but by purely economic factors.
Until recently, the drama of this family and millions like it would've gone unnoticed and ignored, especially if it happened in remote rural areas like this. It would've been just part of the statistics. But now the broad online echo is an example of a rising activeness within the Chinese society, showing how much the One Child policy is hated by the Chinese. Despite all the blackout that the state is attempting, there's an increasing number of outlets and ways to express one's position in China. The authorities just can't tap all of it. They're trying to keep the whole thing under a close supervision, so they must be already well aware of the widespread discontent with such policies.
News and sights like these tend to spread like wildfire these days, which shows that people are more informed about blatant violations of human rights than ever before. The Chinese internet domains are unable to cope with all of this flood of information, no matter how hard they try to block it. People have started talking openly about these issues, and the consequences of the One Child policy are being scrutinized very thoroughly - like this tendency of parents preferring newborn boys to girls and making selective abortions, which results in a heavy gender tilting of the Chinese demographics, with potentially dangerous repercussions.
Pictures like these that went viral on the Internet, have prompted the government to seek responsibility from "the guilty". Several doctors from that hospital were fired, and the local authorities issued an official apology. But this in no way addressed the cause of the problem, only did some damage control about one of its symptoms. Administrative sanctions like these would hardly appease people who've suffered a lot under this policy.
What's more, turns out this mother was continuously verbally abused by the authorities after the incident, because she had dared to speak with foreign media. She's treated as a traitor in her village, her relatives are constantly followed in case they'd think of giving more interviews for the media, and pressured by their community in all possible ways. Meanwhile, her husband, the father of the "legally killed" baby, has gone missing, suspicions being that he's been arrested. That's what "open debate" means for the Chinese authorities.
The thing is, there were administrative punishments after this case only because shit had hit the fan and the story had surfaced in the public space. There are many secrets left uknown on this case, like how the negotiations between the family and the government are going, what compensations would be granted to the mother, etc. Sure there would be some compensations to shut her mouth. But the word has been spread now, thanks to the Internet. With more people learning how to express their opinion in a society where such a thing was deemed unthinkable until very recently, the issue about the One Child policy could now really get into the agenda. Until now, stories like this were left locked behind the walls of the homes of ordinary people, remaining a family secret and a personal tragedy. A couple years ago, a public discussion of this sort would've been impossible. And things would've continued as if nothing had happened.
But now the game has changed. The government-run media cannot control the flow of information as they used to. What's more, in order to stay in touch and be competitive with their online counterparts, they're compelled to open up and start reporting on controversial topics like this one. But let's not be fooled. The Internet hasn't changed China fundamentally. Online censorship is still pretty efficient in that country.
The One Child policy has never been too loved in China, although many people have learned to live with it over the years. In the 80s for example, many local committees directly intervened in family planning, forcing millions of abortions upon families. We're talking numbers the sort of 13 million abortions on a yearly basis. And mind you, these numbers have dropped in recent years, because the authorities prefer to impose heavy fines on violators of this law, rather than performing the killing of fetuses. The Economist reported that this way they've collected over 300 billion dollars since the 80s. If families fail to pay the fine, the child is not given a registration document, which deprives them of basic rights like free education, health care, etc. It's treated like a non-citizen. The fines vary from town to town. A Shanghai family would be fined well over 15 grand for a second kid, the fine increasing, the wealthier the family is, and for some of the high-class families (those without connections) it could reach millions of dollars.
This particular family had to pay 6300 dollars. They had to choose between keeping the baby and paying the fine, or having it killed. They already had a 5 year old kid. They couldn't collect the money (with a monthly salary of $600, that's understandable). So the husband went to a coal mine to try make some more money. But then the local family planning committee visited the mother. She managed to escape, but after a 3-day pursuit she was finally found, several men dragged her to the hospital, blindfolded her and forced her to sign an abortion agreement. After the injection, she gave birth to a stillborn girl.
The version of the local authorities is that she voluntarily decided to end her pregnancy after "a long persuasion", and eventually she admitted she couldn't pay the fine. Of course they'd say that. Meanwhile, the woman's family denies this version.
This brings us to the question if this is just a separate incident, caused by a violent authoritative local ruler who got carried away with abusing their powers, or is it a systematic insjustice inflicted upon thousands and even millions of people by those of high position who've been above the most basic principles of morality for so long that they'd often jump across the line of humanity. Frankly, I'd bet on the latter.
One of the reasons for the cruelty of the local authorities is the fact that the One Child policy is full with loopholes, which doesn't allow the fulfillment of the quotas adopted by the government. The official data shows that in 2007 this policy practically applied only to less than 40% of the population. Bribery is widespread, and personal connections are crucial for mitigating the fines. The policy is implemented differently in different regions. In the big cities it's followed strictly, where entire school classes consist of children without brothers and sisters; while in the rural areas many families are allowed to have a second child, especially if the first one is a girl. The ethnic minorities can even have a third one. Some Muslim families have 5-6. Which means that in practice this policy mostly applies to the cities. On the other hand, this gives the government an excuse to justify the occasional drastic measures it tends to take against these practices.
The tragedy in this particular case is that this family is from a small village, their first kid is a girl, so they should be allowed to have a second one. But their "transgression" is that they didn't have an address registration in that village. They had hoped to trick the system, seeing how the local authorities do not react in case of such violations by their fellow villagers. But they underestimated the situation.
This incident casts some light on the barbaric practices that've remained unknown for so long. The international community only used to view this policy as a mechanism for population control, which in a country like China does seem to make a lot of sense. But in practice it's much more than that. Turns out the forced abortions and the tendentious girl abortions are widespread. So now hopefully the public reaction will be much more adequate.
But frankly, I remain skeptical about this, at least in the short term. In reality we haven't witnessed even a hint of improvement in the legal and moral norms on part of the Chinese authorities. I don't believe a single case, no matter how huge the public outrcry, would make the government make a radical re-thinking of this policy. But in the long run, sooner or later it'll have to be reviewed, and the reason is not so much PR, the Internet, or anything else related to the public. No. The reason is purely demographic, and practical. China is now standing in front of a looming demographic problem because of its aging population, and the gender disparity. Ironically, they might soon find themselves in a situation where they'll actually have to think about increasing their population. But will they have the demographic capacity to do so? The structure of their society is severely damaged already, so that'll be tough.
As for abortions, although they've been allowed in China since the 50s, they were never a widespread practice at the beginning of the One Child policy. Obviously this policy has been controversial since day one. And yet there are many arguments in favor of it. Because let's face it - there are too many people packed in a too narrow space. That's why all of this is tolerated, although there are sometimes shocking incidents like this one.
In theory, forced abortions and sterilization are banned by law in China, but in practice they're tolerated. The authorities never miss a chance to mention that the policy has prevented 400 million additional births, and that in a country of 1.3 billion. The critics of the policy counter with the argument that this has brought a staggering imbalance between the sexes, because more people prefer to have a son rather than daughter (for cultural reasons), and they make selective abortions. So they've reached a point where the ratio is 120 to 100 in favor of the boys.
As a matter of fact, the claim is that violence in birth control has dropped considerably in recent decades. In the 80s and 90s, if a rural family had a third kid (provided they were allowed two), they had to become fugitives, failing to pay the "ransom". The authorities would seize their property, including their home, food and livestock, and sometimes even burn the house to the ground along with all the crops. Now this has changed, but just because of the economy. The reason is that China has been aging for... well, ages. The shortage of labor force is a big issue, and the social security system is under a severe pressure. Forecasts are unanimous that the share of young people will continue to plummet, and that of the elderly would soar. And the economy cannot hold for too long.
So it's again the economy, stupid. This situation is forcing the change in a natural way. Now we could hear of cases in cities like Shanghai and Beijing where families where neither parent has any siblings, are allowed to have two kids. Sometimes they're even encouraged to do so, especially if both parents have university degrees and are well paid at work. Now the biggest obstacle to having two kids (at least in the cities), is not government control, but the more expensive living standard. Which, I think, is a much more natural means of population control.
So the big turnover that many human rights organizations and millions of Chinese families have been striving for, could come sooner than we expect. And it won't be caused by some moral motives, but by purely economic factors.
