China

BreAnna Melter
China-Section 6
Mini Research Paper

When many people think of China, one of the first things that pops in their head is the One Child Policy. China's One Child Policy was created in 1979 by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to temporarily limit communist China's population growth. It has since then been in place for more than 32 years. China’s One Child Policy is basically China’s way of trying to limit population growth. It states that woman may not have more than one child, or families in general are not allowed to have more than one child if they live in highly populated areas, and it mostly applies to Han Chinese people. This doesn’t apply to woman or families in rural areas of the country, minorities living in the country, or couples where each spouse has no brothers or sisters; they may have two children so there isn’t too much population change. It is also possible to for couples to apply for a second child if the first was a girl or had birth defects, but only if they live in more rural areas. It has been very successful in the first 20 years of the law being around; it has been estimated to have reduced population growth in the country of 1.3 billion by as much as 300 million. Although this may be a great way to help with China’s out of control population, it’s also causing some problems and it’s considered somewhat unethical to many people.

Once again, the One Child Policy has caused the population growth in China to go way down, which was the goal, but it is causing some problems in the country now as well. Women are being pressured toward having only male babies. Normally there are 105 males born for every 100 females, but in recent years there have been 114 males born for every 100 females. This pressure to have males is also pushing women towards abortion, neglect, abandonment, and even infanticide have been known to occur to female infants. Back in 2007, there were even reports of officials forcing pregnant women that were...