China’s “Black Children” Will come Out of the Shadows

But is it a case of too little, too late?

by Steven W. Mosher
Population Research Institute

For 25 long years Ah Fan has lived in the shadows. Conceived by her parents before they were of a legal age to marry and have children, government officials demanded that she be aborted. Instead, her mother went into hiding and gave birth to her in secret.

Her parents could have registered her birth—if they had been willing and able to pay a huge fine. As seasonal factory workers, they simply did not have the money.

Instead, Ah Fan joined the ranks of the “black children.” These are the millions of children conceived and born in violation of the one-child policy who do not exist in the eyes of the government. They are, in a very real sense, undocumented aliens in their own native land.

Because they are not registered with the government, such children are not eligible for medical care or dental care at government-run clinics and hospitals. They are also not eligible to enroll in government-run day cares or schools. As a result, many grow up sickly and illiterate.

When, like Ah Fan, they finally reach maturity, they cannot get a government job—or any job, really—since they do not have what is called a hukou. These are government-issued “household registration” documents that identify them as citizens. Sort of like a birth certificate, social security card, work permit, and internal passport all rolled up into one. Without a “household registration,” no one will hire them except employers looking for cheap day labor with little scrutiny from the government. Such laborers receive little pay and no benefits.

This is now about to change, according to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. Secretary Xi has just announced that Ah Fan and millions like her will finally be allowed to register, presumably without paying a huge fine, and will then receive the treasured hukou documents that allow them to legally reside, go to school, and work in the cities where they already live.

Read the full article HERE.

 The Population Research Institute is a non-profit research group whose goals are to expose the myth of overpopulation, to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs, and to make the case that people are the world’s greatest resource. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. For more information, please use this link.  

China Still Abusing the Family

From Steve Mosher
Population Research Institute

The Chinese government is apparently ready loosen to the stranglehold it has had on reproduction in that country since the late seventies—a little bit. Under the new policy, married Chinese couples will be allowed not one, but two children.

“The regime is backing away from draconian birth limits,” says Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, “not because senior Party officials have suddenly developed a conscience. Rather, it will be because they have finally realized that a shrinking workforce and a rapidly aging population are crippling future economic growth.”

For at least the past two years, China’s workforce has been shrinking. Last year, the potential workforce fell by 3.71 million, a significant number even by China’s standards. At the same time, the over-sixty population is exploding. According to U.N. projections, it is expected to more than double by 2050. China is growing old before it grows rich, and the strains on China’s nascent pension programs will be enormous.

Mosher says, “Beijing now realizes that it must stop restricting childbirth and start encouraging it as soon as possible. Yet it can’t simply abandon the policy altogether and admit it made a mistake. That would call the regime’s legitimacy into question.”

The parallels between China’s current demographic and economic malaise and Japan’s demographic and economic decline in the 1990s is striking. The Japanese economy has never really recovered from its “demographic recession.” China may not recover either.

The One Child Policy has caused fertility rates to plummet over the past three and half decades. Sex-selective abortion has reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the country. The strong preference for sons in Chinese culture, especially in rural areas, has resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn baby girls.

The overall loss of human life in China is staggering. China’s own Ministry of Health estimated in 2013 that 336 million babies had been aborted as a result of the onerous population control program. With an estimated 13 million abortions taking place in China every year—almost 1,500 lives per hour—the number is likely significantly higher today.

Chinese President Xi Jinping first sought to loosen the policy in 2013. It was announced that couples where both the husband and the wife were themselves only children would be allowed to have a second child following the birth of their first. The response was underwhelming as few couples applied for a second birth “permit."

Mosher says, “Now couples are allowed to have a second child. But don’t expect it to stop there. A government bent on controlling the fertility of its people will do whatever necessary to produce the number of children it thinks necessary.”

After all, the One Child Policy is only one phase of the larger Planned Birth campaign. This is Beijing’s ongoing campaign to control the reproduction of the Chinese people under a state plan in the same way that it controls the number of tanks, or the number of coal-fired power plants, that it builds each year.

This means that, if the Chinese people refuse to conceive and bear the number of children that the state demands, childbearing will become mandatory. Women will be forcibly inseminated, regular pelvic examinations will be instituted to monitor their pregnancies, and abortions will be forbidden.

Unless and until the Communist regime abandons its Planned Birth policy, and allows couples to freely choose the number and spacing of their children, abuses will continue.

And since when has a one-party dictatorship ever voluntarily relinquished even a portion of the power that it wields over its people?

The Population Research Institute is a non-profit research group whose goals are to expose the myth of overpopulation, to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs, and to make the case that people are the world’s greatest resource. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. To learn more, use this link.  

Violent Population Control Continues in China

Anne Morse
Population Research Institute

Contrary to recent reports, China’s population control policy still systematically enforces a policy of coerced abortion, sterilization, and child abandonment. The propaganda, coercion, and violence used by the Chinese Family Planning police continues to violate the rights of Chinese women, men, and their unborn children.

In November 2013, the Chinese government changed the regulations to the policy: couples in which both persons are only children are eligible to apply for a second-birth permit.

Media coverage and a non-profit, All Girls Allowed, have lauded this move as a victory. Media reports have even gone so far as to claim that the lower than expected number of couples applying to give birth reflects a tacit approval of the government’s population control policy.

Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute, rebuts these claims, saying “Every child born is a gift that deserves celebration, but we cannot ignore the continuing policy which coerces and forces Chinese women into abortions at a rate of a quarter million every week.” The 2013 change in the one-child policy was not the first; in the mid 1980’s, the government permitted rural couples whose first child was a daughter to apply for a second-birth permit in an attempt to mollify the country’s catastrophic gendercide.

The incremental change in the policy in 2013 was a change in degree—not in kind, —and the Chinese government still retains tight control over reproduction. According to a Business Spectator article, 28,464 couples applied for a second birth permit last year in Sichuan, China’s most populous province. The government only approved 5,530 of the couples’ applications for a birth permit. The systematically enforced intrusion of the Chinese government into the most intimate and personal part life continues to violate the human rights of the Chinese people.

“Abuses are continuing at this very moment,” says Mosher, who blew the whistle on forced abortions in China in 1980. “The Chinese family planning police enforce the one-child policy by levying exorbitant fines, threatening one’s source of employment, and when such methods fail—the family planning police force women to undergo abortions."

In terms of duration and the number of its victims, China’s population control policy retains its distinction as the worst systematic abuse of rights in human history. “Any government which engineers and enforces a policy of violently ending young lives demands impassioned opposition from every member of humankind,” Mosher stated.

Anne Morse is the media and research coordinator for the Population Research Institute.

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.