Stuff You Should Know - What is China's one-child policy?

Episode Date: October 20, 2009

China's one-child policy, implemented in 1979, was designed to limit population growth. In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck examine the policy's surprising origins, impact on Chinese culture, and pros and cons. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chucker's Bryant. You know, one day I'm just not going to show up. I'll do both of our bits. I'll be like, hey, I'm Josh. Hey, I'm Chuck. Hey, I'm Josh. Hey, I'm Chuck. Hi, I'm a 12-year-old girl. Hi, Josh. I think that's pretty accurate. Good luck with that show. Although, I finally get to be shirtless the whole time. Yeah, true. You ready for a little bit of irony this afternoon? Yeah, let's hear it. Um, back in 1949, okay, short little 36 years before Ghostbusters,

Apple-cheeked, no, 35. Okay. Short little happy Apple-cheeked Chinese man named Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, established the People's Republic of China. Huzzah. Yes. And one of the things that they were big on was reproduction, I guess is the only way to put it. Okay. Um, the, uh, the communist government under Chairman Mao, they opposed birth control. They banned the import of contraceptives. And in, in 49, he said, of all the things in the world, people are the most precious. We ready for the ironic twist? Yes. 30 years later, China catapulted itself to the forefront of state controlled reproduction, which came to be known as its one child policy. Right. Discuss.

You know what the, I got a little stat for you speaking in 1949, you know, the, the life expectancy in China was then? Like seven. 35 years old. Holy cow. And it's 73 years old now. Yeah. With the, uh, with the communist government came things like sanitation, relative peace. Sure. War had, had beleaguered China for generations. Right. Had been killing people left and right. And as a result, the population just skyrocketed. Indeed. And the old image of China that we have is probably like four or five kids, a couple of parents, a couple of grandparents, auntie and uncle, like packed together living in, in a house. Right. Not true anymore. No, not anymore because of the one child policy. So

let's talk about this. This is something people might have heard of before, but first of all, well, why did it come about? It came about from the population skyrocketing. Right. Well, I've got some more info actually. Okay. You ready for this? I am. You want to know how it really came about? Yeah. You didn't look at any of this? I saw him. No. Okay. All right. We're all going to learn here then. Let's hear it, Mr. Smarty. Apparently there was a systems control specialist, uh, in China in 1978. He decides to visit Europe. And back then, um, he was kind of isolated from the outside world, like many of the people in China, the intellectuals in China. China is pretty,

pretty known for isolation. Yeah. So he goes to Europe and he picks up a little book called The Limits to Growth. You ever heard of this? Uh-huh. The Limits to Growth was a really controversial book, um, the study put out by a think tank called The Club of Rome. And basically they said in a nutshell, the world will end by 2070 because of population overrun. Huh. And, uh, they brought it out to big fanfare, uh, along with the Blueprint for Survival, which was published in 72 in England, who basically said the, the people in Britain were, were reproducing too quick and they couldn't maintain. Uh, he goes back to China with these books and he said, you know, it really made sense to me. And so he was connected. He formed a little

group, uh, and decided to take it to the government and said, Hey, we're gonna, you know, he started applying these studies and these statistics to China and said, we're in big trouble. Yeah. And so he took all this stuff and, uh, basically it was from there that it leapfrogged, uh, that it catapulted rather into a reality. However, the ironic thing is, is that whole, uh, limits to growth apparently was a bunch of bunk and it was based on bad statistics and, uh, the co-founder, I'm sorry, the founder of the book of Rome who actually helped write the book came out a couple of years later and they had a retraction that said they wanted to jolt people from the comfortable idea that present growth trends could continue indefinitely. So they basically said we were

trying to scare people and we cooked up a bunch of studies, which led to China's one child policy. Yep. That's nuts. Pretty cool. That's not, that's not the only thing though. I think, um, um, China has, uh, never apologized for its policy and one of the reasons why they instituted it was because the population was growing rapidly. Um, which is fine, right? The reason that Chairman Mao is like, reproduce, reproduce was because his vision for China was, uh, this huge booming economy based on tons and tons of labor, right? Right. Kind of makes sense in a way. It does make sense. The problem is right now China has a quarter of the world's population, but only seven percent of the world's arable land. That's, that's it. That is a rub right there. Yeah. Um, so one of,

one of the reasons in addition to this, uh, fake book, uh, that they instituted the one child policy was to slow this population growth. Right. And it worked tremendously, right? It did. You know, a night, well it, it worked to the tune of about 400 million kids not born. Is that right? Uh, it depends on who you talk to, 400 millions, the high end that I've seen the lowest I've seen is 250 million. Even still that substantial since in the last 30 years, you know what they said in 1980 was, uh, the, the, what's it officially called the national population and family planning commission of China. They said the state agency that runs the reproduction control. They said in 1980 that we must have a cap in the, by the year 2000 of 1.2 billion people. And, uh, it's

projected that they hit 1.27. They weren't too far off, but that's Chinese figures. And then we know it continued to grow. Now there's 1.33 actually in more than that. So it was 2008. Yeah. Apparently every year China adds the population of Belgium to its own population, 10 million people. They literally bring over everyone from Belgium. Yep. They're like, come on. And then Belgium has to start from scratch again. They get to 10 million every January. Come on, Belgium. I'm going to go to Belgium next January. So you can get free trip to China? Well, no. So I can stake my claim there in Belgium. Okay. Just move into some house. They'll move you to China eventually Chuck. Oh, that's true. Um, so, okay, we have this huge population explosion. It's still

going just because if you have 1.3 billion people, even allowing them to have one kid is going to add and add and add it up. Yeah. What's the projection? I believe by 2050 they're expected to peak at 1.6 billion. That's a lot. That is a lot. Um, but actually that's nothing compared to what it would have been had they not instituted this policy, which at first was voluntary. And they saw a greater decline in, um, fertility, um, when this policy was voluntary, right? Right. In 1970, they had a fertility rate of I think six. Yeah. And by night means six births per woman. Per woman. Just so people understand what that means. That's the mean. Yeah. Um, and then by 1979, it was down to three. Uh-huh. So they have their fertility rate. You know it is now. What? Uh,

in the urban areas, 1.7. Oh, I'm sorry. In the urban areas, 1.3. In the rural areas, 2.0 for about a 1.7 average. Right. But even still, if you look at the numbers, that's less of a decline than there was when it was voluntary. Yes. What China started out with was a campaign called, uh, what Chuck? Late, long few. Late, long and few. So you marry late in life. Mm-hmm. You, uh, wait a long time in between births and you have few children. Right. Uh, and couples who, uh, who volunteer for this get a little certificate. Yeah. What's that called? The, uh, certificate of honor for single child parents. Yeah. Must be nice. I guess. I imagine it's probably something that you frame. It depends. I don't know. Sure. Um, we should also say that

the one child policy that was instituted in 1979, I don't know if we actually came out and said that yet. Yeah. That was when it officially became a mandate. So the one child policy, um, at least at first and generally in practice has been, has restricted almost exclusively the Han ethnic majority. Uh-huh. Those are the people who are really subject to one child policies. Yeah. And the, the people who are under the most restrictions are urban couples from the Han majority. Yes. Ethnic minorities are allowed to have, uh, more kids. They've generally been excluded from the one child policy. Well, you have to get permission. I think if you're in the rural area, you have to get legal permission to have a second child if you're first born as a girl. And if you're an

ethnic minority, you can have three kids. Well, you bring up a really good point. Um, that's one of the huge byproducts of this, uh, this one child policy is that the China, the culture of China, not just the government, the culture has been accused of preferring boys over girls. Accused to the tune of encouraging abortions for females, stuff like that. Who knows if that's true, but that's, that's been floated out there. It's true. It is. Yeah. Um, at the very least there's been tons and tons of reports and allegations that, uh, there's a state pressure, if not state mandated abortions. Okay. Um, or at the very least local mandated local pressured abortions. Um, but one of the, one of the ways China still, um, has an, a low abortion

rate, 25% of the female population report having an abortion where, uh, in the U S 43%. That was higher than I thought that's apparently really low. Is it? Yeah. Um, at the very least low, uh, compared to anecdotal evidence. Okay. Uh, there's probably a lot of girls out there who aren't willing to say that they had an abortion and have true. Um, but still, let's say that those numbers are completely accurate. Right. China has 25% abortion rate. The U S is 43%. One of the reasons that they've been able to maintain a low abortion rate comparatively, um, is through open and universal, uh, access to contraception. Yes. IUDs and sterilization is what they prefer over there. 90% of contraception is longterm. Right. They don't do the condom or the birth control

pill that much. Not much. Or vasectomies, of course, in China. No. They put it all in the woman. Because again, the, the, they have been accused of preferring boys. It's a very patriarchal society. Right. You can't do that though in the long run. Cause I got another stat. 2023 is already well underway everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right. Because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep. Stamps.com is like the post office elevated.

They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS. Plus, stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with stamps.com today, just use our promo code stuff for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff.

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Apparently there's been a huge rise in prostitution, which has led to a huge rise in the prevalence of HIV. There's been all sorts of social maladies, I guess, among men who can't find a wife. I mean, imagine they're just not being a woman out there that you can find to marry and settle down with. It's just not an option for you. It's going to produce all manner of psychological and social problems. Absolutely. There's all sorts of weird things that are popping up from this one child policy. Another one that I hesitate to use the word weird more like horrific is female infanticide. We said that China's been accused of preferring boys over girls. I should say there are surveys out there. There are facts and figures that China puts out that contradict

any criticism. Sure. There's two sides to this coin, but in the West there's lots and lots of accusations of female infanticide. Apparently it was traditional until the Cultural Revolution and it started to kind of pick back up again. There's no statistics or figures on how many girls might be killed at birth. But number one, apparently abortion after ultrasound sex screening sexing was so prevalent that in 1994 China banned sex screening, neonatal or prenatal sex screening. Wow. So you couldn't tell whether you were having a boy or girl. Now there's a private sector that's picked up that's in lack that will give you an ultrasound to let you know what you're having. Sure. And apparently the female infanticide if you view abortion as infanticide has increased.

Well right. But even infanticide under like the medical or sociological definition of killing a child when it's born or leaving it to die is still around. Right. And those are reflected in the boy to girl ratio. Right. Which is pretty significant. It doesn't sound like a lot, but what are they? In 2005 an estimated 118 boys were born for every 100 girls and that peaked at 130 boys for every 100 girls. And just to compare that to the rest of the world or industrialized countries I should say roughly 104 to 107 boys for every 100 girls. Yeah. So definitely a big diff. One of the reasons why boys would be preferred is they can earn more than a woman. Yeah. Let's say a woman marries a man. She gets married off. She gets absorbed into the man's family.

What happens to the parents? Here's part of the problem. What happened? 70% of China's aging population doesn't have a pension. They don't have 401Ks over there. They don't save the government starting to encourage it. This is what I see is the biggest problem maybe. This is a huge, huge problem. Who's going to take care of people when they're getting older? So here's what's resulted. A phenomenon called 421. Right. You have a couple. It's the two. Yep. And they're responsible for the care of one child and four parents, four grandparents. Yes. So that's like the new family structure as far as financial support goes. And as you keep having just one child, one child, that 421 structure keeps going on.

And then it's 1-6. Well, you know what I mean. Right. That one child will have to be responsible for the care of ultimately six, right? If everyone is still alive. His two parents and the four grandparents. Well, then you just start killing the grandparents. That's just too much of a burden. No one expects that. Right. No, because that, well, yeah, I guess if it's a boy and he has no one to marry and he's unlucky enough, no, that wouldn't work out. If it were just a boy and he never married, he'd just be responsible for his own parents. But what about the grandparents? Again, I think that was one of the points they made though was as your parents old and the grandparents are hanging in there, all of a sudden your parents are in their 70s, your grandparents

are in their 90s and you're the sole child. Right. If you are lucky enough to marry and there are no grand, if your grandparents are dead. Right. True. You still are saddled with two sets of grandparents and a child. Right. And that's what you're responsible for providing for, right? Yeah. That's a big problem. Part of that is, has been alleviated by a revision in the policy where urban couples who are only children themselves. Right. Can have more than one child. True. So that leaves two siblings. But you have to apply to do that still though, right? Yeah. It's still very much unless you're an ethnic minority. I don't think you have to apply for a child if you're an ethnic minority. Okay. Another revision that they had, Chuck, was they

stripped local birth quotas. Oh, they did. Is this the birth permits? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They they stripped the requirement to obtain these birth permits in a lot of the provinces recently, right? Yeah. Which basically they did it by taking away the requirement to get a birth permit for a first birth. Right. So what happened before was any locality had a quota of how many births could occur, say in a year or a month or something like that. And if that quota was filled already, then some couple applying for a permit to have a birth would be denied. Right. Until the next cycle. This is nuts. It is nuts. I'm all for family planning, but this is turbo family planning. What's nuts is that aside from these social problems, it actually has led China to

become a burgeoning economy. Right. I mean, it's actually worked in an economic sense, but in a socio economic sense, it's exacting these huge tolls. I do have a couple of stats to back that up. Before they instituted this policy, the population and poverty was 250 million. That's been reduced to 40 million. Wow. And education of the average 15 year old went from 4.5 years to 8.5 years. Yeah. 2023 is already well underway, everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right. Because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And you know,

it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep. Stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS. Plus stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with stamps.com today, just use our promo code stuff for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts.

Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff. Stock up on everything you need to conquer cold and flu season at your local Jewel Osco. They have everything you need for any cough and flu needs this season. Get cold and flu relief from products like Vic's Nyquil or Dayquil, Tylenol cold and flu, Alka Seltzer, Mucinex and Bigelow teas. When you're feeling under the weather, Jewel Osco has everything you need to get feeling better fast. Find everything you need at your local Jewel Osco and feel better fast. So these are the stats that China's going to point to clearly to say that, hey, it's working. Right. And you can't, I think it's so easy to vilify China for this. The Christian pro-life

groups are hugely against this one child policy because it does suborn abortion. Right. Very clearly. So there's a lot of people opposed to it, but if you're an economist and maybe an economist with no heart, a damage to your prefrontal cortex, then yeah, it makes a lot of sense and it worked. They've also started the girl care program. You heard of that one? And that's basically in a nutshell, kind of trying to encourage the fact that girls have value and worth and are not second-class citizens. You like that billboard, don't you? Yeah, the billboard. They have a billboard in China that's in the Hibai province that says, there's no difference between having a girl or a boy. Girls can also continue the family line. Yes, genetically speaking. So they're trying to do what

they can there. I guess probably the biggest rub of China's one child policy is that reproduction is a basic human right. The government's not supposed to tell you how many kids do anything to interfere with your reproduction. And it's also contrary to the will of the people. In a 2003 Chinese study, there were some people who said they preferred one child. That's about 35% of the population surveyed, but 57% said they preferred two. So it directly flies in the face of them. Exactly. What's interesting though is that there is a huge decrease in preference of three children or more. Like 5.5% of the population surveyed said that they would want three kids. So it seems to have peaked around two. And one of the reasons why China announced recently that it would be

another decade before it repealed its one child policy is because they're afraid of another baby boom. And what they're trying to do is create a small family culture in the country. But surveys like these suggest that they've been successful in doing that. I think it's up for review next year, isn't it? No, 2000. Is it? It's up for review next year, but I don't know if that means anything's going to change. I think they said this summer in July that it was going to be another decade before they repealed it. And there were a lot of people after the member of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Yeah, killed like 10,000 kids. Yeah. And a lot of people's only child. That's your only child. Sure. So long, kid. And what happens if you were 50 when your child died?

Right. Because, you know, you wait a long time to get married and you your SOL. Thank you, government. Yep. You know, I know plenty of Americans who think that it's the responsible thing to do to only have one child. I've heard people say that as a human, it's like irresponsible to have two and three kids these days. Well, yeah, the toll we exact on the environment or adding to the strain on the carrying capacity of agriculture. Supposedly, the agricultural techniques we have now can support a global population of 10 billion. So we have a little ways to go. But who knows what will happen before then? How much technology will advance? We may turn to Soylent Green. Who knows? Do you know there's two women out there walking the planet right now, at least two,

who were sterilized before they ever had kids because they wanted to save the environment? Uh, no. Who are they? They're both English as far as I know. Really? Oh, I remember reading about that. Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out to me. Has nothing to do with China's one child policy, but yeah. Right. So Chuck doesn't look like they're appealing it. They did make some, they did, for those people who were still in reproductive age following the earthquake, who lost kids, they were making exceptions, right? Did they? But ultimately, it's, it looks like steady the course with the child's, the one child policy. Right. So if okay, if you want to read anything more on China's one child policy, you've got an article on the site appropriately entitled,

What is China's one child policy? I'm pretty sure if you just type in one child, it will come up in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. Uh, and let's do listener mail. Josh is listener mail time. And I'm just going to call this, uh, from Austin, uh, our, our young fan who had a dream about us. And I've tried not to read dream emails because that encourages people to send their dreams. And we've gotten a lot of, I had this weird dream, but this one was about us. So of course I'm going to read it. Uh, my name is Austin. I'm 14 and I'm your fan and I live in Atlanta and it makes the show so much better because you're located in Atlanta. True. Yeah. You know, he feels at home with us. Uh, he's been listening for a while. He loves us and he's

just starting high school this year. Right. And his podcast has been a lifesaver in AP biology. Anyways, I finally had my first dream about you. His first dream. He anticipates more. Uh, this is a good one though. Uh, he awakes from bed and he notices that he's fallen asleep while listening to the podcast. Sounds like reality so far. Uh, he walks outside and there's a small red plane with a huge banner that reads all hail Chuck and Josh. That was no dream. Yeah, we sent that plane over your house, buddy. Uh, I'm a little confused about it and even more so when I arrive at school and see that there is a bronze statue in your honor because you guys saved the economy with our audio book.

Yeah. How about that? Um, however, it takes a gloomy turn from here after a day of many questions and much confusion. I finally put together the clues after saving the economy. You both take charge and become dual dictators of America. Sounds about right. You require everyone to be educated by your podcast and only your podcast as made by the stuff amendment. We actually amended the constitution and we institute a half child policy. Sure. A half child policy. Uh, and we almost obey your command. Immediately, China declares war on us because you try to expand your band, uh, podcast to their country. We had a guy that wrote in, by the way, said it was not banned. No, the blogs ban, not the podcast. Oh, okay. Good to know. Uh, the rest of the dream is a bit

foggy and I wish I could remember more. However, it seems to be a theme that the dreams that people write in end up being true and the unlikely chance that this does happen. Please remember me as a fan. That's from Austin in Atlanta and Austin, we will definitely remember you. We will. We will remember you and we take power and crush you. Uh, if you have a super cool dream about me and Chuck, or if you want to comment on China's one child policy or, um, you have more than 10 children, more than 10, send us an email about it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage.

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