The EconomistDecember 7th 2019 China 61T
o mark the70th anniversary in October of the People’s Repub-
lic of China, a giant parade trundled through Tiananmen
Square filled with symbols of what President Xi Jinping, the coun-
try’s leader, calls the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.
The two most important ones, Chaguan would argue, were a
squadron of nuclear-missile launchers and a float showing a mod-
el family in their apartment, comprising two parents and two
daughters winsomely playing pat-a-cake.
Nearly four years after China scrapped its one-child policy, the
harshly enforced system that between 1980 and 2016 limited most
urban families to a single child, and many rural folk to two, Com-
munist Party bosses are assiduously promoting two-child families
as an ideal. From Liaoning to Hubei, provinces are discussing sub-
sidies and services to support babymaking. It is not working. Chi-
na’s fertility rate is among the world’s lowest, and far below what is
needed to maintain a stable population. The country is greying
fast: the number of working-age people began shrinking in 2012,
years earlier than expected. It is a complex problem. But one cause
is that officials are too stubborn and controlling to accept that tin-
kering with quotas is not enough. They should stop setting them at
all. Enforcement is now uneven and arbitrary, but some Chinese
parents are still being punished for having a third child.
Public opinion is increasingly divided by such coercive meth-
ods. The case of Xie Zhengling, a schoolteacher from the southern
city of Yunfu, made national headlines last month. According to
government documents posted online by supporters, Ms Xie was
urged three times by local education officials to “take measures to
correct”—ie, terminate—her third pregnancy. Their last attempt
came in the month before she gave birth, despite her pleas that her
unborn child was “too big” to abort. Ms Xie gave birth in January.
Both she and her husband, a policeman, were fired, as is the rule
for civil servants who exceed birth quotas. On Weibo, a micro-blog-
ging platform, articles tagged “A policeman was sacked because his
wife had a third kid” have been read over 9m times. Some netizens
express sympathy, noting that the couple were heeding govern-
ment calls to have children. Others argue that public servants en-
joy privileged access to many services so should expect no pity.
This heated debate is revealing, because it is rare to hear ordin-
ary Chinese challenge the party line that decades of harsh popula-
tion controls were necessary. Cai Zhiqi, a scientist who runs a
chemicals company in the coastal city of Yantai, is a striking case
in point. His own life is neatly bookended by the one-child policy.
Born in 1979, the year before the policy began, he recalls a cheerful
rural upbringing as one of three children. “Though we were poor,
the house was full of joy,” he says. When his wife, another scien-
tist, fell pregnant with a second daughter in 2010, they resolved to
keep her, applying for birth papers without mentioning a first girl
born while Mr Cai was studying in America. Alas, in 2012 someone
reported him to his employers, the South China University of
Technology. In vain his lawyer cited official guidance suggesting
that Chinese who studied overseas were allowed two children. Mr
Cai was fired as an associate professor for having a second child.
Just three weeks later China relaxed the one-child limit as a pre-
lude to eventually scrapping it.
An amiable host, Mr Cai shows Chaguan his laboratories, and
points out the schools attended by his young children, amid the
skyscrapers and building sites of Yantai’s Economic Development
Zone. “Like in Harry Potter,” he beams, gesturing at a castle-like bi-
lingual academy. He has three children now. In Yantai the fine for a
third is about 300,000 yuan ($42,000) per rule-breaking couple,
but officials have not sent Mr Cai a bill. “Among my peers now, es-
pecially private entrepreneurs, quite a few have three children,” he
says. “If you want to have more children you pay some fines.” Still,
he does not question why China’s founders imposed birth limits
on a poor, agricultural country. Despite losing his own case, he
says he understands China’s family-planning policy.A cruel and unnecessary experiment in social control
Many scholars are less forgiving. Wang Feng of the University of
California, Irvine, accuses defenders of the one-child policy of
confecting a common official claim, namely that the policy “avert-
ed” 400m births. In fact, says the professor, that projection is
based on sky-high fertility rates from 1970—just before a decade of
precipitous fall that preceded the one-child policy. In fact, he says,
most of China’s decline in fertility rates happened in the 1970s and
was caused by such forces as urbanisation and women’s educa-
tion, which led to very similar changes in other Asian nations like
Thailand and South Korea that eschewed mandatory limits on
births. What can be said is that China’s policy produced a lot of
one-child families—today the country has about 150m of them—
and perhaps tens of millions of abortions and sterilisations, many
of them involuntary. Corrupt and brutal family-planning officials
demolished the homes of some who resisted. Women had their
menstrual cycles recorded on blackboards, for all to see. As birth
quotas bit, gender ratios became more skewed by infanticide and
sex-selective abortions of girls. China now has 30m fewer women
than men. The country has ended up with roughly the population
it would have had in any case, but via an exceptionally cruel route.
Still the machine grinds on. While in Yantai, Chaguan dropped
in on a population bureau unannounced. A visibly bored official, a
Mr Zhao, recalled how once upon a time, an extra birth would
prompt a team to race out and “knock on the door immediately to
collect fines”. His office has not imposed such a penalty in “a few
years”. Still, he was firm when asked about the case involving the
schoolteacher in Yunfu. “According to the regulations, that is how
it should be.” That bullying mindset is both deeply entrenched and
disastrous for China. It is hard to have a national rejuvenation
without more babies. 7Chaguan Mark it with “B”
If China wants a baby boom it should stop punishing people who have lots of children