Asian Miscellany (1)—One Child Policy

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Asian Miscellany.

[a] One  PD

This first post in "Asian Miscellany" is driven by deadline—as most of them will be in the coming weeks and months. As I explained in the introduction, this series of posts allows me to try out a few ideas that I plan eventually to include in various encyclopedias or on-line sites that have asked for my input. They are not the same as the pieces that will eventually be published, but more of a "long draft," meant to work through a few ideas in an brief essay that often mandates strict "word counts" of 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 words. In this case, China's one-child policy is a useful place to start, since it is often dominated in discussions by people with extremely strong opinions meant to make starkly political points. I am not against that, but readers of Round and Square will surely have noticed by now that I also feel that we could use a bit more context for this complicated thing we call life. Nowhere is that context more necessary than with a policy that has been as divisive and influential as this one. 

Feel free to peruse the other Modern China posts in Asian Miscellany. 

1 One-Child              2 Education             3 Food/Drink          4 House           5 Work          

6 Entertainment       7 Sports/Games       8 Urban/Rural        9 Family Life    10 Children

China's "One-Child" Policy"
Ethnographic Reflections
The "one-child policy" is actually a cluster of overlapping policies with varying levels of compliance from region to region and over the course of the past thirty years. One of its least understood features beyond China is its relatively variability. It has predominantly applied to urban areas, been enforced with some modifications in rural areas, and does not apply to several minority groups and the special administrative regions. For that reason, it is not easy to talk about "the" one-child policy. For our purposes, though, we will consider the sizable belt of towns and cities in eastern and central China, where the policy has been most consistently enforced. Although it would be possible to take up the entire essay in discussing exceptions, it is equally clear that the effects of the policy have been felt by a large majority of the Chinese population, and they range from demographics and economics to the social, cultural, and even psychological. Let's examine.

Population and Economics
Various government estimates assert that China has had 300-400 million fewer births after thirty years of the policy, and some claim that it has had a significant impact on China's economic growth in the past thirty years. Others dispute both the numbers and the impact, but almost everyone agrees that the policy has had an effect on population. This, too, has had effects not always anticipated by planners. Again, although the numbers and percentages have been debated, there has been a marked shift toward male births—in some estimates as high as 130 for every 100 female births.  Even the more conservative figures give serious cause for concern, and on many levels, as we shall see. Beyond birth ratio, the policy has also had an effect on the size of different segments of the population. China is rapidly approaching a health care crisis, with a sizable percentage of elderly being cared for (directly and indirectly) by a relatively small set of generations born under the one-child policy.


Family and Education
Early social concerns focused on the "spoiled child" problem that many anticipated with one-child families. By no means has this been a minor issue, and its dynamics have played out in both predictable and surprising ways. One of the first terms to stick was that of the "little emperors"—the boys who were the focus of parents and grandparents. Although the oldest segment of the first one-child policy generation is only in its mid-thirties (making any meaningful assessment extremely difficult), there is no shortage of opinion on the matter in China. Most of it is negative, although many also add that it is all but inevitable when a cluster of adults takes sole interest in one child. This has a name, and is perhaps more significant than the "little emperor" issue.

[b] Schooled  RF

It is called "4-2-1" in China, and has become the standard equation for worry, pressure, and aspirations for the generations born since the late-1970s. It is important to realize that its effects work both ways, and that "1-2-4" is another way of looking at the matter. In its most basic form, it means that there is one child, and there are two parents and four grandparents. In its most common version, it tends to reinforce the doting that is already a part of recent child-rearing lore in China. It works another way, though, and this is something mentioned very often by young people themselves. As one put it recently, "The pressure is too great; it is not just that I have to do well in school, the way my parents were pressured when they were growing up. It's just me, and both sets of my grandparents and my parents remind me of it every single day." 

It goes even further on the family level, however, because the pressure is not limited just to school and doing well on exams. It is increasingly working its way into serious concerns over housing and care for an aging population. In terms of demographics (above), it is a social problem. At the level of each family, it is a personal one, and causes a great deal of worry up and down the "4-2-1" ladder of responsibility.


Personal and Psychological
As we have already seen, it is difficult to generalize about the social effects of a policy that not even thirty-five years old, and has had uneven coverage across many parts of China. On the other hand, there is a significant amount of information available that speaks to these matters, including at the level of the individual. It is necessary especially for Westerners to be careful not to generalize or "assume" the psychological effects on "only children," especially in a rapidly changing society such as China's. Certain patterns are very clear, though, and have been noted by government workers, employers, psychologists, and anthropologists.  The clearest is the rapid decline in the use of the rich language of kinship in China. Even visitors to the People's Republic of China from Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong (especially before it returned to China in 1997) have noted the very narrow set of kinship terms employed to describe contemporary life and relationships in China. 


It is extremely common for friends to refer to each other as "elder brother/sister" or "younger brother/sister," an extension of meaning that was hardly uncommon even before the policy, but is significantly more prominent now. More interesting is the almost complete decline (mostly inevitable) of the complex array of terms used to refer to extended kin, such as aunts and uncles, which each have further arrays of distinctions according to age and relationship to the parents. This sea of kinship terms was second nature to almost everyone who lived in China before 1980, and gave the individual a deep sense of place in a complex web of social relationships. In thirty years, it has become almost a footnote to an older kind of life, known only to families in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and overseas families across the world.

[c] Uno  RF

Finally, we will look at one more well-documented outgrowth of the policy, and it is a place where the social, personal, and even demographic meet. In marriage, we are beginning to see the dynamics of the policy play out in the family and personal decisions of a wide-range of "only children." No longer is residence after marriage—especially in urban settings—assumed to be with or near the family of the husband (patrilocality). It has quickly developed into a series of individual and small-group choices in which much larger decisions and assumptions are embedded. In addition to that, the gender divide has created a boomerang effect, as it were, with the "little emperor" theme. When it comes to marriage, women form a smaller group (estimates vary) in comparison to men who wish to marry. The effects of this on everything from government policy to personal frustration are well-documented in just about every newspaper and magazine published in China. 


From large-scale issues of demographics and governmental health care policies, all of the way down to gender dynamics at the level of individuals wishing to marry, the one-child policy has had significant effects on China during the past thirty years. While we should be wary of generalization—especially those that contain our own cultural assumptions about social and political life—few people in China would deny that the policy has led to changes in the way that they organize, plan, and carry on with their daily lives.

Feel free to peruse the other Modern China posts in Asian Miscellany. 

1 One-Child              2 Education             3 Food/Drink          4 House           5 Work          

6 Entertainment       7 Sports/Games       8 Urban/Rural        9 Family Life    10 Children