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Florida State University Libraries Florida State University Libraries 2016 The Legacy Of China’s Social Policy Failures and The One-Child Policy Andrea Ploch Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY THE LEGACY OF CHINA’S SOCIAL POLICY FAILURES AND THE ONE-CHILD POLICY By ANDREA PLOCH A Thesis submitted to the Department of International Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduations with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Spring, 2016 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Andrea Ploch defended on April 5, 2016. ______________________________ Dr. Whitney T. Bendeck Thesis Director ______________________________ Dr. Jonathan Grant Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Dr. William G. Weissert Committee Member 2 | Page Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 A Brief Word on Mao Zedong .................................................................................................... 4 Deng Xiaoping Era ...................................................................................................................... 5 Population Theory at its Beginnings ........................................................................................... 6 The Drawbacks ............................................................................................................................... 9 The Hukou System ...................................................................................................................... 9 Unsettled Social Inequality: The Migrant and Rural Struggle .................................................. 11 Urban Middle and Upper Class Benefits of Having Just One Child ..................................... 14 Market Limits: Upside-down Population Pyramid ................................................................... 15 Weak Infrastructure: Welfare and Health Care ..................................................................... 17 Social Control: Limiting Social Change ................................................................................ 20 Confucian Inheritance and Legacy ............................................................................................... 22 The Skewed Sex-Ratio in Contemporary China ....................................................................... 22 Trafficking of Women ........................................................................................................... 23 Dangers from STD Migration................................................................................................ 26 Woman’s Health ........................................................................................................................ 28 Urban Women........................................................................................................................ 28 Migrant and Rural Women .................................................................................................... 30 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 32 3 | Page Introduction Reeling from the devastation of Maoism, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to create a powerful economy in China by combining communism with capitalism in 1978. capitalism was seen as a method of making the economy flourish and communism sustainable. However, China faced an alarming population growth that threatened to consume much of the economic growth. Hence, influenced by Malthusian theory, China’s leaders devised a plan to cut the amount of mouths to feed through population control, and the infamous One-Child Policy was born. Implemented in 1979, the policy was used to regulate childbearing so that couples were restricted to conceiving just one child. While the law was applied throughout China, it was most enforceable in urban centers. If the law was violated, coercive methods such as forced abortions and revoked state aid were used as forms of enforcement. This thesis will explain how the social repercussions associated with the One-Child Policy are not all directly linked to the policy nor are all unique to China. The body of the article is divided into two sections explaining how outdated and rigid government infrastructure and Confucian culture is directly linked with the growing social issues. The paper ends by concluding how ulterior motives, such as the prosperity of the Chinese economy and the legitimacy of the CCP, dictated the manner in which the government handled the growing public problems, and in all, how the One-Child Policy exacerbated them. A Brief Word on Mao Zedong When the CCP came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong took over as China’s championed peasant leader. In order to create a leading superpower that stood as proof of the success of the communist model, Mao set out to create a self-sustained nation. However, his policies proved to be catastrophic. Those policies, most notably the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Great Leap 4 | Page Forward and Cultural Revolution, left China economically and socially devastated1, with upwards of seventy million people dead due to starvation and purges. In addition, China’s natural resources and landscape lay wasted, and widespread poverty was coupled with rising inflation2. The CCP also experienced backlash from the Chinese public because of the horrendous policies. Vulnerable, the government sought to reverse the effects of Maoism by stimulating the economy as a means to create stability and validity. Incidentally, despite the massive number of deaths across the country, there was a baby boom that propelled the Chinese population from 560 million in 1949 to 850 million by 19763. The CCP saw the population growth as a threat to China’s economic progress (a fear only heightened after the official 1982 census revealed that China's population had exceeded the one billion mark). Therefore, the government used propaganda such as the wanxishao or "Late, Long and Few”, for population control, which served as the foundations of the One-Child Policy4. It was not until after Mao’s death in 1976 and the arrival of Deng Xiaoping’s leadership shortly thereafter that the government formalized the One-Child Policy. Deng Xiaoping Era Deng Xiaoping, a moderate communist with capitalist tendencies, stepped in and took over as China’s paramount leader in 1978. Deng oversaw the reform era that centered on combining capitalism, rapid urbanization and population control as the means of achieving economic prosperity and government legitimacy. His goals were to maximize the Four Modernizations; strong agriculture, heavy industry, secured national defense, and controlled science and technology, as quickly as possible to help China flourish. Deng began China’s transition by opening schools and businesses closed during the Cultural Revolution in order to return critical thinking in scholarship, and the CCP’s cadre 5 | Page system and laws were restructured to decrease corruption, while simultaneously moving away from a strict centrally planned system5. The CCP also re-opened diplomatic relations with the West through its 1978 Open-Door policy, which encouraged the exchange of ideas from the West to the East6. During the second stage, Deng introduced a socialist market economy, in which “the state, Party and people uphold socialist production relations, adjust mechanisms like the market to the situation and guarantee against a capitalist restoration”7. Despite the reform’s conflict with fundamental communist ideology, the CCP was able to rationalize this dramatic shift in ideology through the “reinterpretations of the language of orthodox Marxism in urging the Chinese to develop a new political consciousness, one that would pave the way for rapid economic reforms.”8 The propaganda hid the political maneuver by penning it as a means of modernizing, using capitalism with Chinese features9. Deng encouraged this line of thought through his motto “to get rich is glorious.”10 Simultaneously, elite Chinese scientists competed privately to parent the dramatic population control policy meant to accelerate the effects of the economic reform11. The following section will discuss how the One-Child Policy came to be, and how its creation fits into the broader theme of policy failures by the CCP, which are directly linked to China’s overall social issues. Population Theory at its Beginnings Population theory is founded on the works of social scholar, Thomas R. Malthus. His book, An Essay on the Principle of Population, stated that if the human population increased at a greater rate than its means of survival, without natural disaster or political check to control the population, widespread hardship and famine would be the result12. However, the theory did not become relevant globally until the 1950s, when populations were exploding dramatically across 6 | Page the world. Seen as a form of “social engineering,” population control became the method of securing financial and social stability, especially in developing countries. The field grew from the 1950s to 1970s with the establishment of the Population Council in 1952 in New York City, and the first UN organized world Population Conference in 197413. As the field developed, social scientists split on the methods of applying
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