“It’s a girl” the three most terrifying words to any family during the reign of the one child policy. The one child policy was an effort by the Chinese government to lower the overall population of China. The policy was created to repair damage done to China after Mao Zedong’s failed “Great Leap Forward”, part of his second Five-Year-Plan where he banned contraceptives in an effort to increase China’s overall population. Although the Great Leap forward worked in the beginning, in the end, it eventually led China into famine because China became too overpopulated for the little amount of food that they were producing. After Mao Zedong lost power, Deng XiaoPeng came to office. The first thing that he did was to create the one child policy. The one child policy was a government policy created by Deng XiaoPeng that was in effect from 1979 to its official end in 2016. It stated that Chinese families were only allowed to have only one child per household with exceptions. Families were allowed to have more than one job if one parent had a dangerous job and their first child was a girl. In 2016 it was replaced with the two-child policy which allowed all families to have two children. The two-child policy was enacted because the Chinese government noticed that the economic status of the country was falling. The babies born during Mao Zedong’s ruling were growing old and there were not enough working class to support them. Also, because so many females were abandoned or killed during the time of the one child policy, the Chinese government feared that they would soon run out of women. While the one child policy was good in concept and did its job by decreasing the overall population of China, it also came with negative consequences that will continue to effect China for years to come. This policy caused a drastic decline in the female population, A rise in female infanticide, it caused the government to establish certain family planning methods that were inhumane, and a rise in male preference. 

The one child policy led to a drastic decline in the female population during the time that it was enforced.  In 2015, the male to female ratio in China was 120 boys to 100 girls (Zraick). The normal ratio of males to females is 105 boys to 100 girls. There are 15 more boys than the average per 100 girls. According to Ebenstein Avraham in the article “The Missing Girls in China and the Unintended Consequences of the One Child Policy”, the number of “missing girls” in China went from 3.4 million in 1990 to 9.2 million in 2000. The difference between these two numbers is almost 6 million. The term “Missing girls” refers to those who were aborted, killed at birth, or their whereabouts are unknown. These statistics come from the censuses during those years.  This could have been seen as both a good thing and a bad thing from the Chinese perspective. On one hand, that is 6 million people that are not inhabiting China so China is 6 million people less. That is 6 million people that will not be taking up the natural resources in China. On the other hand, China now has 6 million less girls than boys which is going to result in a gender imbalance between males and females in China.. In the video “China: Unnatural Selection” by Al Jazeera English, a man tells a story about how his daughter got taken away from him by government officials. He told about how he constantly called the government to get his baby back but they kept refusing. He eventually found out that they put her for adoption in another country. He found out after doing more research that this happened to many others in China around this time. Another reason for the low numbers was that families would abort or kill their babies if they turn out to be a female. This practice was known as female infanticide.

 Female infanticide, also known as gender selective killing or gendercide, is the deliberate killing of female babies. While infanticide has always been an issue throughout Asian countries, it became an even greater issue in China during the one child policy. Female infanticide became an issue during the time that the one child policy was enforced.  Before the invention of the ultrasound machine, families would often wait until they gave birth to decide if they wanted to keep the baby or not. Most did not get abortions because the practices during this time to identify the gender of the baby were unclear and their results were not always accurate. Families did not want to risk terminating a pregnancy only to find out that they would have had a male child. It was difficult to get pregnant with a male so that would have been seen as a lost opportunity by the family in China. After the ultrasound machine was invented, families were about to see if they were having a boy or a girl child. If they were pregnant with a female child they would, more than likely, terminate the pregnancy. The article “How the One Child Policy Backfired Disastrously” by Simon Worrall is an interview between Worrall and Mei Fong, a Chinese activist against the One Child Policy. Fong tells about how she was in Szechuan in 2008 during the earthquake that killed 7,000 people, a majority of which were children. She said that after it happened, people were rushing to get their vasectomies and sterilizations reversed so that they could have another child. Fong tells about an interview she did with a woman who carried out mass forced abortions “She spent years working as a mid-level official in southern China and, by her own account, was responsible for over 1,500 forced abortions, many of them late term. She’s living in America now, and it was just after Halloween when I met her. She told me about handing out candy to the local neighborhood kids. I felt like I was interviewing an SS officer in Brazil after the Holocaust. She used just the same arguments: I had no choice; I was just doing my job, etc. At the same time, she herself had secretly adopted a son after having a daughter. But because that was illegal under the one-child policy she herself was enforcing, she had to keep her son hidden. So there was this huge split between what she did in the daytime—and what she did at night.” This woman carried out 1,500 forced abortions by herself. Forced abortions were abortions where the mother did not want to get an abortion but was forced to for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons that women in China at this time got abortions was because they already had a child this could also account for why most of the abortions were late term. The mother could have been trying to hide the baby but got found out by government officials. Another reason that she might be getting an abortion is because it is a female child and she wants to save the one child that she can have to have a boy. Forced abortions were a big issue during the one child policy as government officials did everything that they could to ensure that the one child policy was being followed. 

During the one child policy, the government enforced multiple different methods to ensure that the one child policy was being followed and families did not have more than one child. Some of the methods included sterilization, abortions, and contraceptives. Abortions were when the baby was taken out of the body before it is born. Some abortions were forced abortions and also performed late term. Sterilization is a more permanent type of birth control for women. Contraceptives are birth control that is temporary. During the time of the one child policy, families were fearful to go against the government so they took the options they were given no matter how much they disliked them without being able to object. According to Liang, “69% of married Chinese women between the age 15 and 49 were using contraception. The percentage was identical to the US contraceptive rate among women within a similar age range in the same year. However, unlike western countries, where contraceptive pills were more prevalent, IUDs and sterilization played a dominant role in intervening reproduction in China. According to population researcher Pi-Chao Chen, by 1985, IUDs and sterilization constituted 85% of all contraceptive use in China.” This is alarming because in America, most people who get birth control get temporary birth control so if they want to have a child later in life they can. The Chinese government during this time enforced that people should get more permanent forms of birth control such as sterilization. This ensured that women would not be able to have another child during this time. This also made sure that the one child policy was being followed because women were not given more permanent types of birth control. 

Male preference, or son preference, is preferring a male child over a female child. It became very prominent in the Chinese culture after families were forced to only have one child. Family is very important to the Asian culture and families knew that the child they picked affected their family line. They knew that if they had a female child that once she got married, her last name would change to her husband’s. When her last name is changed, that is the end of the family line. Families did not want their family line to end so they preferred a male child. Another reason that families often chose to have a male child over a female is that they believed that males would be able to take care of their parents better than a female would. Families who had a male child were often treated better at funeral homes and retirement homes, while families who only had daughters were often discriminated against because it was believed that females children would not be able to take care of their parents and the expenses. (Chen) Gender preference not only affected birth rates, it also affected how certain children were treated. Males were most commonly treated better than females. Males were often given better food, better clothing, and a better education than females were given. (Short). Male preference not only affected the females in China, but it also affected the males. As Therese Herketh states in the article “The Effect of China’s One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years”, “The shortage of women may have increased the mental health problems and socially disruptive behavior among men and left them unable to marry and have a family. Lack of women resulted in kidnapping and trafficking of women for marriage and increased numbers of commercial sex workers that brought potential rise in HIV and STD spreads.”  Since there was such an uneven ratio of males to females, there were not enough females for all males in China to get married. Since family is important to the Chinese culture, males are expected to get married. Since they were unable to get married because of the lack of females, it led to males resorting to human trafficking to find wives to marry. This also led to an increase in commercial sex workers who brought with them the risk of increased risk of HIV and STDs spreading. Some families were allowed to have more than one child if they lived in rural areas and their first child was a girl. (Chen, Liu, Xie) Allowing families to have a second child if their first turns out to be a girl shows gender preference in China and the push for sons. If a family had a daughter the first time and lived in a rural area, the government gave her the option to have another child because they wanted her to have a son. This is just one example of the gender preference in China during the one child policy. Chinese people are very superstitious. When they would get a premonition that their child would bring them bad luck when they were pregnant, they would get rid of it. It that child was a boy they would either give it to a family member or sell it if the family member did not want him. If the baby was a girl, they would often get the midwife to kill it either during the birth or right after it is born. After she would die, the mother and midwife would usually tell the other family members that the baby died due to complications. (Wordie) This shows just how different family methods are depending on the gender of the child. Usually, if a child was boy he had more options and they were most of the time more humane than their female counterparts. 

While some people believe that the one child policy had a direct impact on the female population, others tend to believe that the decline in the female population is natural. One person who believes this is Sarah Conley. Conley states that “The sad truth is that trying to support this many people will bring about environmental disaster. We can see the damage that is already being done by our present population of “just” 7.3 billion. We all know about climate change with its droughts, storms, rising sea levels, and heat. But it’s also soil depletion, lack of fresh water, overfishing, species extinction, and overcrowding in cities.” More and more people are being brought into this world and soon, it will be overpopulated. Conley believes that the one even though some of the practices done during the one child policy were unethical, that it was necessary. China makes up 19 percent of the population and if they kept going without anything being done to control their fertility, then the world would be overpopulated even sooner than expected. 

The one child was the way that the government chose to reduce the overall population of China. There is a lot of controversy surrounding this topic and whether it was more on the helpful side or the hurtful side. According to my research, a family planning policy was needed. The population of China was becoming too large for them to be able to support themselves. My research points towards the fact that the one child policy was not what China needed at this time. The one child policy had a huge impact on China as a whole but most importantly on the female population. China’s one child policy effected the female population in a multitude of different ways. The one child policy, increased the gap between males and females in China, it caused a drastic increase in infanticide in China, it caused the government to implicate family planning policies that were unfair and in some cases permanent, and it caused an increase in male preference. None of these issues are going to go away anyway soon. The effects done to the female population of China will haunt them for years to come. 
