China's one-child policy -- an insider's perspective

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http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/355978/chinas_one_child_policy_leads_to_adoption.html

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China's One Child Policy Leads to Adoption of Thousands of Orphans in the U.S.
A Mixture of Incredible Pain and Unbelievable Joy

By Karyn Campbell
Published Aug 28, 2007
Rating: Currently 4.50/5

I sat in my hotel room in Nanning, China, listening to the cry of a baby in the hallway. Unable to remain still, I was propelled through the doorway. To my right another American woman was rolling film of a Chinese toddler walking toward her new daddy. On the left, an infant wailed as she was assaulted by the chilly air of a western-style hotel in June, the strange smell of foreigners and the unfamiliar cadence of an alien language.

Through the confusion, I heard what I had been waiting for."De Yang," a young man called softly. He stepped out of the room across the hall, holding a 9-month-old infant.I stepped forward, anxiously looking at the baby's face. Did it match the picture I had received in the mail two months earlier? She was sleeping so I couldn't tell about the eyes, but there was no mistaking that rosebud mouth. I had memorized it night after night while looking at her photo.I held out my arms to receive her from the gentle hands of our Chinese guide.

"She's very tired after her long day," he explained softly. I nodded and glided back to my hotel room, savoring the moment I had been anticipating for more than a year. The confusion of giddy parents and frightened children faded like a blurred photograph with a focus on the central figure: Yuan De Yang. A product of the one-child policy.

For our family, China's one-child policy is more than a political phenomenon to be studied dispassionately. It is infinitely important. It's impossible for those of us who are intimately involved with this policy to look at it objectively. As with many things in life, it is a mixture of incredible pain and unbelievable joy.

About 10 years ago, I read an article about Chinese orphanages overflowing with baby girls. In the 20th century, thousands of babies were dying every month because there wasn't enough milk to feed them.

As I read about the history of these babies, I understood how Chairman Mao's policies, including the one-child policy, had actually led to the abandonment of thousands of children, mostly girls, every month. To really understand the one-child policy, you have to start many years before it was even conceived back to the late 1950s, when Mao was in the height of his power. From 1958 to 1960, Mao implemented a program called the "Great Leap Forward." China had always been a populous nation and Mao wanted to use all those people to bring the country into the industrial age along with the rest of the world.

He thought that if China produced a lot of steel, it would develop like the western world had so he put everyone, even farmers, to work producing steel. Meanwhile, the fields were not being planted and harvested. Food was rotting in the fields.

To add insult to injury, Mao knew nothing about metallurgy and he thought that pots, pans and other scrap materials could be melted down in backyard steel furnaces. Unfortunately, the results were worthless "pig iron."

So the Chinese people had iron, but they couldn't use it or sell it. They had grain, but no one had harvested it. In addition, local officials were pressured to report record harvests to justify the Great Leap Forward. These falsified reports were used to determine how much grain would be exported, leaving nothing for the local people. The result: famine. Starvation. The official death toll from famine during the Great Leap Forward is 14 million, but those outside China have estimated it closer to 43 million.

Because of this inadequate food supply and China's traditional problem with overpopulation, a birth control campaign was proposed in 1962, but it was never carried out. Then Mao's next great idea was born: the Cultural Revolution. Anyone with even a minimal knowledge of Chinese history is familiar with this period of time in the 1960s when values were turned upside down. Red Guard students beat their teachers to death with government approval. Intellectuals were sent from the cities to live in the countryside to get a taste of peasant life. These doctors, philosophers and merchants were set to farming: something they were not equipped to do by nature or training. More crop failures. More starvation.

In the 1970s, the idea of family planning cropped up again. China's official position about birth control was, "one child is ideal, two are enough, three are too many." But this wishful thinking wasn't enough to keep the population of China from overtaking the amount of food available. Even those of us who hate the one-child policy have to admit that China had a huge problem. No matter how much food the country produced, its citizens produced too many children. Even with zero population growth, when every couple has no more than two children, there wouldn't be enough food for everyone. Something had to be done to get the population "growth" to negative numbers, which meant that two people had to have less than two children.

In 1979, China instituted the one-child policy which basically limited couples to only one child. In actuality, the policy only applies to the majority Han Chinese living in cities. People from ethnic minorities or those living in the countryside could have more than one child. The first policy was a temporary emergency measure to be in place for five years. But every five years, it is reviewed and carried forward again. The current five-year planning period runs until 2010.

Over the years the policy has been modified and today if both partners are only-children, they are allowed to have more than one child. As always, people in rural areas and minorities are not held to the one-child rule.

The policy has been pretty effective. In a country of 1.3 billion, the population has gone down by 300 million in the last 20 years. Unfortunately, most of that reduction has been in baby girls. While the normal ratio is 105 males for every 100 females born, in China it is 114 to 100.

Most Americans are aware of this. "Oh she's lucky her parents didn't kill her," whispers a strange woman to me in the grocery store.

"They don't like girls in China," comments a cashier as she hands me a receipt.

WRONG! They love girls in China.

It's hard for those of us living in the freedom of American democracy to understand the no-win situation facing prospective parents in China.

Imagine you make $5,000 per year. You work in your parent's neighborhood store, selling vegetables, gum and soap to the neighbors. You have two rooms with electricity during daytime hours when the city government turns on the generators, but you don't have running water.

You fall in love, get married, and like newlyweds everywhere you plan to start a family. Your first child is a beautiful raisin-eyed girl and you fall in love with her as she takes her first breath. You would gladly give your life for her. You know it will be hard as she grows up. Traditionally, Chinese women leave their birth families when they get married. The oldest son has centuries of tradition pressuring him to take care of his parents in his old age. But the responsibility actually falls on his wife, who became a part of his family when she got married. In fact, in some rural areas of China, when the bride marries someone far away, she never sees her family again. Girls have always been raised to belong to someone else's family. You know you will only have her for a few precious years before she is gone forever.

Although your country has a one-child policy, you know that people often have two children. It's a matter of hiding the pregnancy from the local population control authorities, so when your wife gets pregnant again, you are guardedly happy. You and your parents have saved enough money to pay the $10,000 fine - two year's salary - for having a second child. But what if it's another girl?

You have no way of knowing. Ultrasounds to determine sex are illegal in your country, but abortions are free and encouraged. In fact, if your local population control authority finds out your wife is pregnant, she may force her to have an abortion, even up to term. You know people who have been caught and taken to the hospital for abortions. Or worse. Some people have left their newborn girls to die because they don't have money to pay the fine. Others quietly hold a blanket over the little girl's nose, preventing her from taking her first breaths.

As much as you love girls, you simply can't afford another one. Your family has sacrificed money to pay the fine, but only if the second child is a boy. You already have one girl you are bringing up to be a daughter in someone else's house. You can't do it again. What will happen to you and your wife in your old age if you don't have a son to take care of you? Who will care for you when you can't care for yourself? You may end up in the social welfare institution alone, dirty, sick and in pain.

So you send your wife off to visit distant relatives in the countryside. No one there knows she already has a child and she should be safe, as long as she stays out of the spotlight. You take your daughter to the family store with you every day, your heart heavy as you watch her playing in a corner.

When your wife comes back six months later, your heart silently breaks as you watch her get off the train alone. You don't ask any questions. You understand the despair she must have felt when your second daughter was born. Did she cry when she saw the raisin eyes of another daughter? Did she let anyone go with her as she crept through the night to the local market, waiting for daybreak? Did she quickly find a spot in the crowded market to place the basket containing the precious bundle? Did her heart beat with anxiety as she snuck around a corner, watching until someone found the child of her body? Did the tears fall as she sobbed a silent farewell in her heart?

You never discuss it, but you understand all too well when your wife hungrily searches the features of infants in the arms of Westerners, taking them to America forever. You can never tell anyone about your second daughter. It is illegal to abandon a child in China. And the punishment is severe.

And when your wife gives birth to her second official child -- a boy -- you show no emotion as you fill out the paperwork. Child number two, you write without hesitation. You make arrangements to pay the fine and you raise your children: a daughter for someone else's parents and a son for you.

You never talk about it, but you are sure your wife is also dreaming of a raven-haired child living with blonde strangers. You see her almond skin next to a white hand, leading her through babyhood, through school days and into adulthood. You will never forget this unspoken member of your family. You have done the best you could. For the good of China. Through your sacrifice others will live. It is enough. It has to be.

This is the reality of the one-child policy. It's not about 1 million girls who are abandoned in China each year. It is about the one girl who was left in the market on a warm day in September. It is about one birth mother who had to do the unthinkable. It is about one blonde westerner waiting in the immigration line to leave Hong Kong with a nine-month-old girl with raisin eyes snuggled to her chest. It's about one child who will grow up wondering why her birthparents didn't want her.

For the good of China.

I hope so.