Ovi Magazine Issue #24: Nationalism - Published: 2013-01-31

Article
Lily Jade
One Child Per Family,
How is it like in China?
I
can’t remember how many times I’ve been
asked about One Child Policy, at the moment
people learned I’m from China. Indeed,
you wouldn’t understand it if you never
lived there. According to all the questions
I was asked, I have to say, the world is very
confused on this issue. Well, as an only child in
a regular Chinese family, today, I’m going to talk
about how is One Child Policy really like.
It’s such a big question, what is the reason behind
the policy? It is known to all, China has the largest
population over the world. At the end of 2011, the
total population of PRC is 1,347,350,000 persons
(released by National Bureau of Statistics of China).
Any government would do something get it under
control for sustainable development. To find the
reasons, we have to get back to the middle of last
century, while two great Baby Booms swelled the
population in China.
The first one occurred between 1950-1955, known
as postwar births. The country finally walked out of
the haze of war. Social and political environment
was stable, at the meanwhile, economy was growing
gradually. People were finally able to settle down
and the standard of life was improved. During the
period, 94% of women had 3 children and more than
50% of women had 6. With a very large population
base, there were 20.88 million of babies born each
year.
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The second Baby Boom was from 1962 to 1971,
which lasted for 10 years long. It happened for so
many reasons including economic recovery after
the three years of great famine, poor entertainment
during the Culture Revolution and so on. There
were 27.952 million of new born each year and the
population jumped to 852.29 million by the end of
1971, it was 1.573 times of 1949’s (541.67 million).
The second baby boom had affected China in all
aspects and its influence lasts until today.