Introduced in 1979, the one child policy was put in place by China’s communist government with the belief that if would reduce the number of mouths the People’s Republic would have to feed. China abandoned its One Child Policy in late 2015 and raised the limit to 2 children in an effort to solve its aging population problem.
Effects of One Child Policy:
120 male births for every 100 female.
Aging population
Lower fertility rates with an increase in women’s education
But even with a looser two-child limit there were still rules that people found problematic, such as a requirement throughout the 1990s that women be sterilized after the birth of a second child, or a requirement that births must be spaced at least five years apart.
In 1983, just one year, China sterilized over 20 million people, more than the combined population of the three largest US cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
A mass sterilization campaign for close to 10,000 people was held in Puning City, Guangdong, as recently as 2010. According to Amnesty International, almost 1,400 relatives of couples targeted for sterilization were detained, to pressure these couples to consent.
Significant Development – One Child Policy Background Info
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