Opinion China’s one-child success

It is ironic that China is rethinking the policy not because it has failed. It is doing so because it succeeded. In fact its success is China’s biggest problem today. Rigorous implementation has seen China’s average fertility rate falling below replacement levels. As a result,China as a whole may be having around 1.4 to 1.5 births per woman,with Shanghai registering a low of 0.96. Official estimates claim that the policy has prevented more than 400 million births since its inception. But this has brought in its wake several disturbing social and economic challenges. As it braces to wrestle with these,the question is,can China retrofit the demographic architecture of the country? 

Easier said than done. There is a growing realisation that the cure was worse than the disease. It has resulted in a skewed sex-ratio of disturbing proportions.China’s gender gap has steadily grown worse from a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early ’80s to now stand at 123 boys for every 100 girls. This has also gone on to worsen the deeply-entrenched cultural preference for a male child. The Ancient Chinese Book of Songs reads more like a dirge for girls: “when a son is born,let him sleep on the bed,give him fine clothes” but “when a daughter is born,let her sleep on the ground,wrap her in common wrappings,and give broken tiles to play.” The stringent implementation of the one-child norm has resulted in a sharp spike in “gendercide” through illegal prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortions.  

The policy-induced crisis means that the country will have to grapple with a whole set of social,productivity and fiscal challenges. To begin with,growing gender gaps have set off an intense competition for wives. It is estimated there could be as many as 40 million “surplus” men in China by 2020 unable to find a wife. Hence a highly organised criminal network of trafficking in girls and women: anywhere between 2000 and 3000 girls and women kidnapped a year. Particularly perverse is the rising incidence of baby bride trafficking,where armed gangs are kidnapping baby girls for farmers who want wives for their sons when they grow up.

China is already home to half the elderly in Asia,with those above the age of 65 expected to rise to 320 million by 2040. A fast ageing society will also induce a prolonged period of labour pains. It is estimated that China’s labour force could peak by 2016 and structural shortages of labour could become an endemic feature of the economy. Inter-generational tensions are also on the rise as the one-child policy grapples with what has come to be known as the 4-2-1 problem. This means that there will only be one child left in a family to care for two parents and four grandparents.  

As these social costs have mounted,China has mounted a campaign to achieve population control through softer,less coercive means. It is unlikely that course-correction will result in a major reversal in policy. Changing course will prove tricky in a country where population control still remains the primary policy goal. To expect China to walk away from this will be both unrealistic and unfeasible.  

The writer is an associate professor at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi express@expressindia.com