Odd Exceptions in the Family Planning Rulebook

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07 April 2011, 6:10am

I've had discussions with many of you in the past about China's one child policy. Every time I ask a Chinese person what exactly the rules are, I get a slightly different explanation. From what I had gathered, you could have two kids if and only if you and your spouse are both only children, or if you live in the countryside and your first kid was a girl.

Apparently, the rules are far more complex:

Zhejiang Province allots two children to a couple if the husband of a woman with one sister lives with his wife’s family and helps care for her parents.

[...]In a city in Hunan Province, government officials exploited a loophole allowing couples with a disabled child to have a second; 40 percent of households granted the exemption included a spouse employed by the government. Disabilities as minor as nearsightedness qualified for exemptions.

There are obviously huge problems that have come as a result of this law — widespread abortions of female fetuses, lack of children to take care of the ageing population, etc — but I personally believe the problems could be far worse if there were no laws in place. Chinese culture is very unlike western cultures: it is still a great source of pride to have enormous families, despite the lack of resources or ability to care for them. (One could argue, though, that the one child policy also results in couples who may have otherwise not had any children having exactly one, because they are almost expected to do so now.)

Nellie, an expert in Asian social sciences and gender equality, once brought to my attention one problem very few likely think about: because so many female fetuses are aborted (or baby girls murdered), the male populations will outnumber the female ones by and large, resulting in significant human trafficking, likely from poorer countries. This is already a problem in the countryside in China, where many Vietnamese women are sold to small villages to be loyal wives (and tend to escape shortly thereafter).

Anyway, it's an interesting topic. The one child policy has lots of problems and evils and flaws, but China has such a huge population, I have a hard time finding any better solution.