Chinese one-birth rule -- how enforced?

[RiverRunner]

I’m posting this GQ for my wife, who is a geography teacher: How do the Chinese enforce the one-couple/one-child rule?

I have searched the SDMB archives and found a couple of threads that seem to bear on the subject, but they tend to veer off into Great Debate-land quickly; I hope that won’t happen here.

What I have found so far (correct me if I’m wrong):
Each couple is allowed one child.
Multiple births (twins, triplets, etc.) are OK.
After the first child, the parents are “strongly discouraged” from having any more children.
Said discouragement may take the form of tremendously high fines, possible destruction of property (although I’m real hazy on this one), and lack of government recognition for the second and succeeding children.

Is this correct? And what am I missing?
TIA,
RR

[kimera]

Forced abortions.

[Lissa]

I think a great deal of the pressure to only have one child is social. Government retribution can decend on a whole neighborhood, which causes people to basically police themselves. If one person in the neighborhood is causing you to get demoted at your job, getting you fined, etc., there is a great deal of anger which is heaped on the offender. Everyone is angry at you, your house is vandalized, you’re shunned by your friends, and refused service in stores.

[Johnny_L.A]

I heard about this on NPR year or two ago. The report said that abortions could take place up until the point where the baby’s head is out of the birth canal. So a solution to kill it can be injected right up until it’s practically born.

[Enola_Straight]

I remember seeing on a PBS program about China’s policy…there are government lookouts in the workplace who monitor females who show the signs of pregnancy: morning sickness, beginning to show, and other more subtle ways. The ‘offender’ is then reported.

Women who voluntarily report to clinics are publicly awarded a good citizenship citation.

[Johnny_L.A]

Here is a description.

The Law and Second Children. Couples in rural areas are only allowed one or, at most, two children. Any third child is officially labeled “excess,” and the law dictates that these “excess” children be delivered in the commune clinic. Large red placards proclaim,

“THE CLINIC WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY MISHAPS THAT OCCUR DURING THE BIRTHS OF EXCESS BABIES(2)”.

This is because the infant mortality rate for third babies in these clinics is a perfect one hundred percent!

If a mother tries to give birth to a third child, she is led to believe that perhaps an exception will be made in her case. She is soothed and told that all will be well – that she and her child will be taken care of. Everything is, indeed, all right until the baby’s head crowns. Then the “barefoot doctor” locates the fontanelle (soft spot) on the baby’s head and injects a formaldehyde solution through it into the baby’s brain. As the mother watches in horror, her child thrashes in agony as his or her brain slowly disintegrates(2). Of course, the “doctor” merely shrugs and disavows knowledge of what is happening. The injection site in the fontanelle is so small that the grieving mother cannot detect it.

Michael Weisskopf of The Washington Post describes this type of murder:

In the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohot, however, hospital doctors practice what amounts to infanticide by a different name, according to a Hohot surgeon who would not allow his name to be used for fear of reprisal. After inducing labor, he revealed, doctors routinely smash the baby’s skull with forceps as it emerges from the womb. In some cases, he added, newborns are killed by injecting formaldehyde into the soft spot of the head. He estimated that hundreds of babies die this way in his hospital every year.3

[snip]

3. Michael Weisskopf. “China’s Birth Control Policy Drives Some to Kill Baby Girls.” The Washington Post, 8 January 1985, p. A1.

[astro]

IIRC the strict one child policy is really only seen and enforced in the major urban cities (Beijing especially) . In the more rural and quasi-suburban areas I think 2 kids is the norm.

As to actual methods

Today, the Chinese family planning program continues to be carried out against the popular will by means of a variety of coercive measures. Despite official denials and intermittent efforts to discourage some of the more blatant manifestations of physical, that is, bodily, coercion, coercion continues to be, as it has been from the late 1970s, an integral part of the program. Mandatory IUD insertions, sterilizations, and abortions continue. The national family planning journal continues to issue thinly disguised injunctions to get the job done by whatever means necessary. The emphasis continues to be on “real action,” “effective measures,” and “practical results.”

[jimmmy]

Amnesty International, citing “reports of serious human rights violations resulting from the manner of its (birth control regs)enforcement” calls on China to make sure the coercive methods are stopped.

http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/china/china96/report/cc7.htm

AI never actually says it is a PRC Central Policy of coercion-- more their take seems to be that it is a problem in the provinces and Beijing is implicitly going along.
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/china/china96/wom5.htm

-----QUOTE--------------------------------
A previous report published by Amnesty International have cited a wide range of indications of the use of forcible measures taken from official family planning reports and regulations; articles in the official Chinese press; testimonies from former family planning officials; and testimonies from victims of forced abortion. Also detailed were cases of hostage taking and ill-treatment by officials of the relatives of couples who had failed to pay birth control fines or who had fled their villages attempting to avoid abortion or sterilization. (See Women in China - Imprisoned and Abused for Dissent (AI Index: ASA 17/29/95, June 1995)).
The Chinese authorities have never responded to such reports in detail. In recent years they have simply asserted that coercion is not permitted .
----------Quote_------------------------------

[sailor]

*Originally posted by ava *
**Forced abortions. **

Here we go again. Every time this question is asked someone has to pull this out of their sleeve. This has been discussed several times before and you can search for those threads if you care but “forced abortions” is not the correct answer.

In general, coercive methods are used by overzealous officials but that does not mean it is government policy. And, as anyone who has been to China can tell you, there are plenty of couples with more than one child.

[amarinth]

Slight Hijack: When I was younger, everyone predicted that the one child policy would bring about problems as there would be a dearth of women a generation later.

It seems that if it had happened, it would be relevant now… was this an unfounded fear?

[Diceman]

Back in college (maybe 5 years ago) I took a course on Chinese culture to fulfill my liberal arts requirements. They said that married couples are fined if they had more than one kid.

[Sam_Stone]

By the way, the forced birthrate limits turned out to be totally useless. The decline in birthrate in China was matched almost exactly by declining birthrates in other countries like India, which had no birthrate limits.

[senor]

Ni How! (Chinese for hello)

I am an American in China so I can tell you the laws. In the city, the law is one couple, one child. Or really, one woman, one child. A man here can have five girlfriends and have five children if he likes.

In the countryside, you are allowed two children, IF the first baby is a girl. IF the first baby is a boy, the kid is an only child, if the little girl comes first, the couple has to wait a period of time (two years?) then they can try for another baby boy. This is stupid because I have read a report that states that the country only needs about 100 million farmers in rural areas to feed the population, and the country now has over 400 million farm workers. Since about 75-80% of this massive country is rural farmland, chaos will happen eventually.

Having lived in China for almost two years, I know a little bit about the culture. First, they like boys better than girls, for the reason that a boy will be more likely to support the parents in their old age, while a daughter will run off and marry into another family, leaving ma and pa high and dry. Second, Chinese are extremely social people and they do love children and people around them. That’s why they’re 1.3 billion of them here.

There must be paperwork completed when having a baby here. The high fine scares people into birth control (which is widely available). My wife knows a upper middle class young couple with two sons, I asked about the second kid and they just shrugged it off, paid a very large fine and that’s it. Unlike in America, if you do not have money or insurance here, they will leave you in the street. I have also been inside several Chinese hospitals, and most are filthy, but the staff seem helpful (the Chinese way of socialization, they are friendly even if they do not like you.)

Also, in brief, you do not see many police in China, there are not many squad cars running aimlessly about like in the USA. What you have here is a culture of blabber mouths and a lot of housing security staff who will report violations of the law. So, if someone has a second baby, it is wise to spirit that child to a barren reletive in another province.

The problem now is that there are 109 men for every 100 women in China. So, a woman could look like Leonard Nimoy in drag and have her pick of men here. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of unmarried men, in which a lot will be unemployed, lonely, and joining the armed forces of China. Many of the female children are at best adopted by foreigners or at worst abused and neglected. Since Beijing wants to put a clamp on population, they really can’t see this as a negative, until they wind up with 200 million angry, hungry, unemployable, horny men.

Zaijian (goodbye in Chinese)

SENOR

[Urban_Ranger]

*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
By the way, the forced birthrate limits turned out to be totally useless. The decline in birthrate in China was matched almost exactly by declining birthrates in other countries like India, which had no birthrate limits.

Cite? My understanding is Indian population will overtake China’s in a short period of time (a couple of decades).

[Sam_Stone]

Well, you’re right. India’s population will be slightly larger than China’s by 2050. And the birthrate will be a tiny bit higher. (2.10 vs 1.9). But when it dropped from something over 6 or 7 down to 2.1, saying that it was about the same relative drop is pretty accurate.

cite: UN Population Annex Tables

[Hemlock]

Might be worth mentioning that the top-down system of government in China stresses results rather than methods. Thus…

• central government orders provincial governors to limit population growth, adding that promotion to Beijing will reward those that perform best.
• provincial governors tell county officials to limit population growth, adding that promotion will be denied to those that perform least well
• county officials tell village officials to limit population growth, adding that they will have their pay cut otherwise
• village officials stop at nothing to limit population growth, henxe horror stories of forced abortoins etc

Crude but effective. This also accounts for the harsh treatment meted out to Falung Gong followers.

[alice_in_wonderland]

[hijack]
Not that I have any factual information about this topic, but just as a matter of interest, I know 3 families that immegrated to Canada from China, each with one child.

All three had another baby as soon as was humanly possible, after they got their papers.

[/hijack]

[China_Guy]

First off, please use a more recent citation than some of the stuff cited here. Be careful where you get some of this shit because so many different groups have an axe to grind. No doubt some of the stories “cited” have occured, but China’s a big place and you should not extrapolate such sensationalist news. Riverrunner is essentially correct.

generally speaking there is an enforced policy of one child in the cities. In the countryside, the effective varies from one child, to a second child if the first is a female, to two children.

See be admitted to the hospital or seen by a doctor in Shanghai, a pregnant woman first needs to be registered and examined by her local neighborhood parental clinic.

National Minorities are exempt or have a 2-3 child limit.

I knew one woman from the countryside who had three girls. First was no problem, second was a big fine, third resulted in her house being torn down. Know of several other peasant women who had two sons. Just hid out until the second was born and that was the end of the matter (no fine, no penalty). YMMV