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transition in this decade and by 2025 its
population will start contracting from a peak
of about 1.5 billion people.
China will have achieved its demographic
transition in 60 years or three generations,
which is a tremendous accomplishment given
the size of its population. This shows that
legislating population control and openly
enforcing it is a very effective way to fight the
population explosion.
But there are drawbacks to China’s method of combating population growth.
consequences of China’s One-Child Policy are as follows:
The negative
police state enforcement
To ensure compliance draconian measures have been used especially in the countryside
where the authorities have forced women to abort and have even demolished the homes
of peasants who have had a third child. Even though rural Chinese are allowed two
children (if their first-born is a daughter or suffers from physical disability, mental illness
or mental retardation), whereas urban Chinese are allowed only one, the policy meets
with greater opposition in the countryside than in the cities. Pregnancy without a birth
permit is considered “out-of-plan” and therefore illegal. The One-Child Policy is in great
part responsible for China’s police state and its massive and rigid bureaucracy. Local
governments direct officials to punish non-compliance with heavy fines, termed “social
maintenance fees” (shehui fuyang fei), which force many couples to choose between
undergoing an unwanted abortion and incurring a fine much greater than the average
annual income. Children may go without a household registration (hukou) because they
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