China's One Child Policy
For centuries China has stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences. On the other hand, over the last decade it has plummeted economically. A big factor for this massive downfall is the population of the country. China is overpopulated, at the dawn of this century there were some 426 million people living in China. Today the population is about 1.2 billion. About two-thirds of this 900 million-person increase was added within the last 50 years. In essence, the Mainland China alone contributes to at least twenty percent of the world's contribution. (Ogilvy 2000:97) The Chinese government realized that something had to be done or they would never be able to prosper as a country. Not at the rate they were heading, that's for sure. They decided to set up a plan to reduce the population growth. They called it China's one-child policy. This policy limits a Chinese couple to bearing only one child. (Milwertz 1997:56) Initially, the Chines!e government adopted the policy in order to reduce the severe famine that plagued the country. They realized later that it would also help them prosper economically since the overpopulation held them back. The one child policy, although not formally writte
he population growth rate, but it might lower to a point where reproduction occurs very rarely. It is understandable though, because the family name is such a big concept to the Chinese and for it to be carried on is very important. (Clubb 1978:15) They take their cultural beliefs very seriously and will do anything to keep their ancestors happy. The fact of carrying their family name on to the next generation cannot be the only reason to kill off their female babies. Girls in China receive far less attention and resources than boys and are deemed an insignificant role in society. The Chinese tradition implied that there must be a boy among the children in order to continue the family. They felt that the males carried the name of their ancestors and they needed to carry the name for the next generation. Therefore, whenever a couple had a female child they reverted to infanticide. They would either abandon the child or even worse, kill it. This way they had another chance at getting a boy. As technologies advanced, they were able to determine the gender of the child before birth and used abortion as a means to eliminate a female birth. These wide uses of infanticide obviously arouse some issues. The sex ratio was totally unbalanced and the infant mortality rate was horrible. Males were completely dominant in China. They did most of the work and were the head of the house
Some topics in this essay:
Initially Chines,
Girls China,
,
Mainland China,
Women China,
family name,
one-child policy,
population growth,
male child,
reduce population growth,
china's one-child policy,
growth rate,
china's one-child,
reduce population,
name generation,
policy reduce,
abort child,
population growth rate,
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Approximate Word count = 930
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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