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Ebook329 pages6 hours
One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
By Mei Fong
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
For over three decades, China exercised unprecedented control over the reproductive habits of its billion citizens. Now, with its economy faltering just as it seemed poised to become the largest in the world, the Chinese government has brought an end to its one-child policy. It may once have seemed a shortcut to riches, but it has had a profound effect on society in modern China.
Combining personal portraits of families affected by the policy with a nuanced account of China’s descent towards economic and societal turmoil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mei Fong reveals the true cost of this most controversial of policies. Drawing on eight years spent documenting its repercussions, she reveals a dystopian legacy of second children refused documentation by the state, only children supporting their parents and grandparents, and villages filled with ineligible bachelors. An exceptional piece of on-the-ground journalism, One Child humanizes the policy that defined China and warns that the ill-effects of its legacy will be felt across the globe.
Combining personal portraits of families affected by the policy with a nuanced account of China’s descent towards economic and societal turmoil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mei Fong reveals the true cost of this most controversial of policies. Drawing on eight years spent documenting its repercussions, she reveals a dystopian legacy of second children refused documentation by the state, only children supporting their parents and grandparents, and villages filled with ineligible bachelors. An exceptional piece of on-the-ground journalism, One Child humanizes the policy that defined China and warns that the ill-effects of its legacy will be felt across the globe.
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Reviews for One Child
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
4 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well, this was a relatively fascinating read.
There are so many aspects to China's One Child policy and what makes it what it is, and Fong sets out to disentangle the many threads that make up this subversive policy.
Unlike most people who read this book and reviewed it, I enjoyed Fong's story about her miscarriage and how certain aspects of Chinese culture had affected her life. I felt that it grounded the story and made all those traditions and superstitions all the more real.
Sometimes I felt a lot of the stories were rushed, but how else are you supposed to cover such a huge and expansive topic in 200 pages?
The only part of the book I didn't like was when Fong was discussing adoption in China. Of course, so many aspects of adoption in China are shady and suspect -- but I'm adopted and so it hurt to have adoption painted in such a vague and negative light. I'm sure the author didn't intend for it to be that way, but that's just how I felt.
This is a mess of a review but if you're at all curious about China or sociology or how a country manages to conjure something up like the One Child policy, check out this book. You'll learn a whole bunch of weird and wonderful facts that'll make you really fun at parties, I promise. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interesting analysis of this misbegotten policy that had led to an imbalance of genders and to changes in social policy to take care of elders who formerly could count on daughters to manage their sunset years. Now there are no daughters to do it, and much fewer daughters-in-law, because boys and boys only.Chapters deal with the overpopulation panic of the 1970s, the treating of off spring as male princes, how the situation has impacted adoptions (baby selling?) of Chinese girls in the first world, and how the majority of males may be one of the causes of tensions between China, Korea, and Japan. The most heart-rending chapter was about the post-earthquake world of 2008, when so many schools collapsed and so many parents were left childless, which in China is like a death sentence.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fascinating and in depth exploration of China's One Child Policy and all its political, economic, social, and psychological ramifications. Sometimes a bit academic, but a truly important topic with enormous implications for China and the world.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blending journalism and history with a pinch of personal essay, this book argues that China's 'one child' policy has had a number of terrible consequences. I'm glad to have read it, and learned a lot, but Fong's thesis deserves a better treatment than this. From the outset, I think most observers could agree that heavy government pressure to limit reproduction to one child per couple, especially in a society that lacks an independent judiciary and strong protections for individual liberty, is likely to result in corruption and horrible human rights violations (including forced abortions). The strongest parts of this book are the chapters that describe how the policy was implemented, the corruption the policy fed, and the human cost. However, that's not what Fong starts with - instead, she launches the book recounting the 2008 Sichuan earthqauke, noting that the massive child mortality caused by the collapse of poorly-built schools left thousands of parents with no surviving children. Certainly, the death of children is wrenching, but it seems bizarre to blame this result on the 'one child' policy, rather than corruption and shoddy construction. More broadly, Fong notes the phenomenon of 'shidu' parents, parents who have lost their only child, and now have difficulty getting access to nursing homes and buying burial plots. Again, this is a terrible situation, but there are intervening factors between the one child policy and the treatment of seniors with no surviving children; surely there are many couples who never chose or were able to have children, and are in the same boat.That said, Fong identifies several problems worth following: * the rapidly-changing ratio of retired seniors to working people* the excess of unmarried men resulting from sex-selection of fetuses and infants* social tension and violence associated with the large cohort of unmarried men* resulting social pressures to treat women as valuable but without valuing them as free agents.* the sketchy sourcing of Chinese babies adopted to families overseas.* the fact that, after changes in the economy, many young Chinese couples do not want to have multiple children, even as the government has relaxed the policy.What remains missing from the book is a serious discussion of what China should have done instead, especially given the social, economic, and environmental stresses that would have attended fast population growth. Fong argues the one child policy didn't slow growth that much, but to the extent that it has contributed to a lasting shift in the desired size of families, the policy appears likely to make a difference well into the future. The book's policy argument would be a lot more powerful if Fong made a case for a better alternative, but that's just not here.