Only One Child?

I have always been curious about the one child law in China. I have known college students who have come over from China to America to go to school in the U.S. They have tried to explain the law but I am still confused after they are finished explaining. Therefore, I chose to research the one child law.

The law states that each couple can have one child (or two for ethnic minorities and for rural couples whose first child is a girl) (Scutti). If the couple has another child the fine is three to ten times the household’s annual income (Scutti). The fine is called social compensation fee (Scutti). This fee is more for the rich. For the poor it is a flesh and blood tiger (Scutti). The people on farms in the country side need extra hands to work in the fields. Because of the law, they have to pay people to help instead of having lots of children.  According to Chinses officals, the guidelines helped avert 400 million births and in so doing, accelerated modernization (Scutti). But they are making an amendment to the law, allowing couples to have two children if either parent is an only child (formerly, the law permitted two children only if both parents were singletons) (Scutti). In China, 336 million abortions and 222 million sterilizations have been carried out since 1971 (though the one-child policy was introduced in 1979, other, less-stringent family planning policies were in place before it)(Jian).

The law may have helped with the population but may not in the right way. The amount of abortions is too much to handle. 336 million lives have been taken since 1971 and the lives that were taken were little helpless babies that had not been born (Jian). Another problem is when the child gets older it has two sets of grandparents and a set of parents to taken care of all by themselves. This is not a one man job. The new amendment may help with these problems in China but only time will tell. 

                   

Sources:

NY Times; Jian, Ma. "China’s Brutal One-Child Policy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 May 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opinion/chinas-brutal-one-child-policy.html?_r=0

News Week;
Scutti, Susan. "One-Child Policy Is One Big Problem for China." Newsweek. 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. 

 http://www.newsweek.com/2014/01/24/one-child-policy-one-big-problem-china-245118.html