One-Child Policy
Zhang Tong & Lan Hui: Parents of Zhang Yichi, China’s 1.3 billionth person
Ma Baochang & Liu Shuling: Parents of two children; live in rural part of China and struggled after
giving birth to a second child
Zhang Yufan & Zhang Hong: Parents of Zhang Jingyu, an only child; live in suburban Beijing and
want a second child
Sun Kaiyun: Teacher; works with only children
Yang Jie & Dr. Wang Zhenxin & Yin Hongquan: Members of China’s Communist Party; help to
implement the One-Child Policy
Chang Yusui: Doctor; pressured to reveal sex of an unborn baby
Zhang Huihua: Pregnant woman; wants to know sex of her unborn baby
Zhou Min: Principal; works to end discrimination against girls
Wu Yu: 15-year old girl; understands China’s cultural preference for boys
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THE FAMILY ON TV
NARRATOR: This is no ordinary family. When Zhang Yichi was born, he became a symbol of China’s
One Child Policy. The Beijing baby boy officially brought China’s population to 1.3 billion. It was
national news. The authorities decreed that the first child born after midnight in the Beijing
maternity hospital would represent the magical number.
NEWS REPORT: [Doctor making announcement] It’s Beijing time, January 6, 2005. The 1.3 billionth
citizen of China was born at 00:02. Let’s congratulate.
ZHANG TONG: [Baby’s father] To tell you the truth, we are the parents of a celebrity.
LAN HUI: [Baby’s mother] I feel one little baby is enough. I don’t want to have a second one.
NARRATOR: China never misses a chance for propaganda. Little Zhang Yichi’s birth was acclaimed as
a national virtue. Had the one child policy not been introduced, China’s population would have
reached 1.3 billion four years ago.
Today, more people live in China than any other country in the world, more than a thousand million
people. It’s almost impossible to grasp just how many people that is, but next time you’re looking at
a national weather map, imagine a thousand cities the size of Adelaide, Brisbane or Perth or four
hundred cities with roughly the population of Sydney or Melbourne.
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THE FAMILY NOT ON TV
NARRATOR: This is one couple who’ll never feature on national television in China. Ma Baochang and
his wife Liu Shuling live in China’s rural north. They have lived through the darkness of breaching
China’s population laws.
LIU SHULING: Well, after having one baby, if people tried to have a second one and didn’t have
money, they’d have their house pulled down. If they didn’t pull down your house, they’d take away
your timbers and horse-carts. If you didn’t give them money, they’d sell it themselves.
NARRATOR: Mr Ma and Mrs Liu though have two children, sons aged 27 and 12. They deliberately
flouted the population policy, they wanted a second child to help on the farm and look after them in
their old age.
MA BAOCHANG: A son to help us in old age. It’s true.
LIU SHULING: To have a girl doesn’t work.
MA BAOCHANG: The ordinary people need boys.
NARRATOR: Ma Shumin is now a happy, healthy 12-year old, but when he was in the womb, local
officials pressed his mother to have an abortion. Unlike many other Chinese women of the day, she
escaped the trauma of a forced abortion but the family was punished. Their penalty? A so-called
“social compensation fee,” a fine amounting to about four times their annual income.
MA BAOCHANG: After being fined, it was hard. We had no fine food grains left and we had to eat
porridge. We ate the porridge three times a day. Fortunately, we didn’t starve to death.
NARRATOR: When Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, China’s population was 500 million. Thirty
years later, it had nearly doubled. Fearing the exploding population would create chaos and crisis,
China conceived its radical plan. For 25 years, population control has been a major priority for the
Chinese Government.
SIRI TELLIER: [United Nations Population Fund, China] I think it is seen as a pre-condition for all
the others. It’s seen that unless there is a containment of population growth, there will be no
economic growth, and unless there is economic growth, there will be no social stability, no social
harmony.
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LITTLE EMPERORS AND EMPRESSES
NARRATOR: Beijing, the capital of China, officially home to 15 million people, is increasingly modern
and prosperous. In Beijing’s sprawling middleclass suburbia lives the Zhang Family. Their $100,000
apartment is beyond the imaginings of most Chinese, but they worry they’re missing something –
their daughter, 8-year old Zhang Jingyu, would like a brother or sister. It’s lonely being an only
child.
ZHANG JINGYU: Sometimes when I do homework alone at home all day, after I finish my
homework there’s no one to play with.
NARRATOR: Yet the Zhangs are considering having another child. China’s economic reforms have
weakened the state’s hold over people’s lives and for an increasing number of couples, the fine is not
a deterrent.
Zhang Yufan and his wife Zhang Hong are both professionals with well-paid jobs in the software
sector. For them, the dilemma is how to juggle family and careers.
ZHANG YUFAN: In general, the cost for the child is not a big problem. But from kindergarten to
primary school and afterwards… she needs to take part in all kinds of activities.
NARRATOR: All the dancers are girls and they have another thing in common – everyone is an only
child.
ZHANG YUFAN: As she’s an only child, we worry about her growth and happiness during childhood.
Without a brother or sister, she won’t have a sense of fairness. It will affect her growth after she
steps into society.
NARRATOR: There’s now real concern that the One Child Policy has created a generation of spoilt
children, little emperors and empresses. Teacher Sun Kaiyun believes that all the attention an only
child commands is more likely to breed fragility than stability.
SUN KAIYUN: They are very delicate and can’t cope with setbacks and they lack confidence. Lots
of the children are like that. So these children need to be encouraged and praised.
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THE FAMILY PLANNING POLICY
NARRATOR: China is so vast its family planning policy means different things in different places.
This is the Xinyu steel and iron factory in central Jiangxi province. The state-owned enterprise
does more than turn ore into metal; it’s also a factory for social engineering.
YANG JIE: We use our propaganda battlefield, for example, the home for the pregnant women, the
population school, our company’s newspaper, the propaganda billboard, and the radio and television
network to publicize our country’s guiding principle.
NARRATOR: At the factory’s family planning office, women receive free contraception and their
personal health is overseen. Here, the health of the pregnant workers is closely monitored and prenatal classes are provided.
YANG JIE: We’ve established an information network for the women of childbearing age. Within
this network we have detailed information on every employee. For example, who will get pregnant, or
who will get married. We have all this information. We also know when they get the birth permit and
when their baby is due. We’re very clear about it.
NARRATOR: China has become the factory to the world, conjuring up images of a highly
industrialized nation, but more than half of all Chinese live in the country with most people working
in agriculture. It’s here that China’s One Child Policy is misleading. It’s a case of different strokes
for different folks. In the countryside, couples are generally allowed two children. A few hours
drive away from the Xinyu steel factory, local family planning doctors are on the road.
DR WANG ZHENXIN: The family planning policy is based on our country’s status and it suits our
national conditions. I think it’s very good. I don’t think it is soft or tough.
NARRATOR: One positive side effect of China’s focus on population control has been a better
health service for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy.
For fifteen years, Dr. Wang has been making trips like this.
DR WANG ZHENXIN: Well, we are serving the people. We’re serving women of childbearing age, to
improve the quality of population - and the quality of the whole nation. It is a kind of service as well
as a job.
NARRATOR: In 2002, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an
abortion or sterilization, but some provinces demand abortions if the pregnancy violates local
regulations. In this part of Jiangxi Province, Yin Hongquan is the District Communist Party Chief.
Here, there are unspecified “remedial measures.”
YIN HONGQUAN: We punish them based on the relevant parts of the law. Some people have more
than one child, some have an unplanned child, some people abandon the babies, some people did not
put in an IUD. There are a lot. It’s hard to explain. We have the regulations. If someone breaches
the regulation, whatever rules they violate, we will punish them.
NARRATOR: Penalties and punishment are highly sensitive issues. Despite his status, a local official
saw fit to interrupt the interview.
WOMAN CHINESE OFFICIAL: Our country has a law relating to family planning. We open to the
world. We will follow this law. Let’s not talk about it. Is that all right?
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WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?
NARRATOR: China’s One Child Policy has given birth to an alarming imbalance between the sexes.
Many couples have turned to ultrasound machines to guarantee they get the baby they want.
DR CHANG YUSUI: The baby’s head is okay. It’s growing well.
ZHANG HUIHUA: How about the other parts?
DR CHANG YUSUI: The fetus’ head is normal.
NARRATOR: Cheap small ultrasound machines have swept through even remote parts of the country.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of female fetuses have been aborted. A few years ago in this
very part of Jiangxi Province, 142 boys were being born for every 100 girls. Since 1994, it’s been
illegal in China to reveal the sex of an unborn child. That’s been easily by-passed with the help of
red packets – bribes given over in red envelopes.
DR CHANG YUSUI: Well, it did happen before. As everyone knows, some couples gave the red
package to the doctors, and asked for the sexual identification. In the past, I think people believed
this behavior was morally correct. You help people, people give you the red package. I also faced this
same problem.
NARRATOR: 23-year old Zhang Huihua would still like to know if she’s having a boy or a girl.
ZHANG HUIHUA: Can I know now? Of course I want to know. It’s not bad to know my baby’s sex in
advance. I could prepare a name.
NARRATOR: The Chinese Government is extremely sensitive to the hostility and division it’s
population policy generates outside the country.
SIRI TELLIER: Yes, it is the biggest, the most conspicuous and probably the most organized family
planning program in the world, but it is not the only one that has any kind of coercion.
NARRATOR: Farmers Ma Boachang and his wife Liu Shuling know the terror of coercion in China. A
few years before the birth of their second son, Ma Shumin, Lui Shuling was pregnant with a girl.
LUI SHULING: I said to them, as I was pregnant, I would not go for an abortion. If I have an
operation and I bleed, will you look after me? They injected me, but in the wrong spot, and I had to
take oxytocic. The baby was still alive. I was on the edge of massive hemorrhage, and couldn’t move.
The baby was carried away. The hospital gave her to somebody.
NARRATOR: Li Shuling’s daughter lived, but her family never saw her again. Every day, more than
20,000 babies are born in China. For every 100 girls, there are 120 boys. This imbalance leads to
warnings of tens of millions of Chinese men facing a future with no prospect of a female partner.
They are known as “bare branches.” Such thoughts are not for these people on this day. The joys of
new life are uppermost in their mind.
Experts fear that “bare branches” will create crime and violence. Here at the Jian Culture and
Kungfu School in Jiangxi province, there are close to 1,000 students but only 42 girls. Chinese
officials have warned of the shredding of China’s social fabric and a future angry army of 70 million
single men.
In various places in China, the Government’s rolled out a “Care for Girls” program. Zhou Min is the
school principal and the aim is to eliminate cultural discrimination against girls in rural and
underdeveloped areas through subsidies and education.
PRINCIPAL ZHOU MIN: Once born, we are equal, and we are all human beings. We need to respect
each other. I think, even though some older people don’t agree, [the policy] should be eliminated.
NARRATOR: With Government help, the school provides free boarding and tuition for eight girls
from poor families with no sons. 15-year old Wu Yu is amongst them. She knows too well the cultural
preference for boys. Her mother is dead, but Wu Yu remembers that she believes sons were more
valuable.
WU YU: My father has never thought so, but my mother did. They think boys produce a male heir to
continue the family line. They just want a family heir.
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ONE CHILD POLICY: A GREAT SUCCESS OR A VIOLATION OF RIGHTS?
NARRATOR: Back in Beijing, the Zhang family is preparing Sunday dinner. Tonight, the
grandparents are joining them, and when they leave, little Zhang Jingyu will go with them. She only
spends time with her parents on weekends.
YANG HENGZHEN: I have no other choice because both of them are very busy with work and are
far from home.
NARRATOR: The grandparents cherish the idea of a grandson, and the family can afford to raise
another child and pay the fine, but the question is not so much financial as philosophical. To whom to
they owe a greater loyalty - their family or their country?
GRANDFATHER ZHANG YIFU: The Chinese population is really too huge. The social pressures are
too heavy. It’s not good for the children. Our children should be very happy but many children are
not. We feel uncomfortable with that.
NARRATOR: While critics denounce China’s family planning program as a violation of people’s rights,
an attack on the sanctity of the family, Chinese authorities hail it as a great success. Without the
One Child Policy, the country they say would have been in for a rough ride. China estimates it would
have an extra 300 million people today, most condemned to lives of poverty and misery.
SIRI TELLIER: Everybody thinks of China as having had enormous economic growth and they have,
but you still have 600 million people in China living on under two dollars a day.
NARRATOR: China’s population is still growing and on present trends won’t peak for another twentyfive years. Pragmatic if not popular, China’s One Child Policy looks destined for a long life.