The Chinese government is encouraging women to have more children after decades of a one-child policy.
But authorities face significant backlash from Chinese women themselves.
today, On point: Promoting China’s baby boom.
guest
Yanyang Chen, a fellow and fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. She is a frequent columnist on Chinese politics and US-China relations.
Rita Hong Fincher, author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. She is a research fellow at Columbia University’s Weatherhead Institute for East Asian Studies.
transcript
Part I
Meghna Chakrabarti: Joining us today is Yanyang Chen. She is a fellow and research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. She is also a frequent columnist on Chinese politics and US-China relations. Mr. Xiangyang, welcome to On Point.
Yanyang Chen: Thank you very much for having me. I’m always happy to have you on the show.
Chakrabarti: And today I want to talk about what we recently learned about the statue in Wuhan. So this is not China Hour, which has nothing to do with the coronavirus. That’s completely different. So this statue in Wuhan depicts or is depicting some kind of family. Is that so, Xiangyang?
Chen: Yes, this is a sculpture in the green shade next to the Yangtze River. This is a very popular sculpture and was first constructed in his 2017. On the left side, there is a circular structure that symbolizes family unity and integrity in Chinese culture, and next to it are some stick figures that symbolize the ideal family.
And when this sculpture was first constructed, and for many years afterward, it was three figures: a father, a mother, and a child.
Chakrabarti: I’m actually looking at photos of sculptures right now. As you said, it’s very beautiful.
Chen: Yes.
Chakrabarti: Yes. However, his three figures are not the only ones depicted in this photo.
Chen: No more. So a few weeks ago, late last year, two more of his figures were added to the sculpture. In other words, it depicts his family of five: father, mother, and three children.
Chakrabarti: Indeed, the mother was holding the hands of two more children, so they probably looked like little girls, and another child on a scooter looked like a razor scooter.
And this happened mysteriously overnight.
Chen: Because this is a pretty popular tourist spot, people paid attention to the photos on social media and compared them with previous photos. Then I noticed a change. And it actually went viral on Chinese social media.
Because there is an element of irony that the name of this sculpture is “Beautiful Future” Mei Hao Wei Lai. And we know that in the 35 years since the one-child policy was first implemented at the end of 1979, it was precisely in the name of a better future for China. This strict restriction on family births, having only one child, was considered essential for China’s future and its path to modernization.
But 35 years later, we’re living in that future. And, of course, it poses serious demographic problems such as an aging population, plummeting birth rates, and gender imbalance. Chinese netizens then noticed the irony, including comments on social media, including one quoted as saying, “We can’t afford it, so let’s make this sculpture have more children.”
Chakrabarti: This is a very serious issue and we shouldn’t laugh at it, but it is. The cheekiness of some of the social media reactions in China is admirable. Because one of his comments that I saw was, “Who has time to do all this and take a walk?” About taking care of your child.
Then he said, “We should take some more and line them up on the riverbank.” Now, obviously there was this viral moment and a huge backlash over the addition of two other child statues to this famous Wuhan sculpture. However, China has lifted or ended its one-child policy. what? 2015, if I remember correctly.
So why now all of a sudden, as you said, the government added these two more children late last year? In other words, three children were born to celebrate China’s possible future.
Chen: Well, this is actually an interesting point because this sculpture was just built in 2017. As you mentioned earlier, the Chinese government lifted the one-child policy in 2015 and allowed couples to have two children, but that policy was amended again in 2015. . 2021.
So while this country currently operates under a three-child policy, it has continued to have a one-child policy for 35 years as an irreproachable fundamental national strategy. Therefore, it has a strong cultural and social influence in the popular imagination. Meanwhile, the government’s recent push to encourage couples to have more children has not been effective.
So I think this sculpture is a belated reaction to this kind of government propaganda effort in terms of what the ideal Chinese family should be.
Chakrabarti: Okay. This is why we wanted you to come back to On Point today. Because over the past two months, we’ve been reading that the Chinese government is trying to push for increased birth rates more openly and aggressively. To ensure that families, especially women, consider having more children. Up to 3. Okay, so you can understand, I understand the facts of the situation.
You said this was an official policy change for 2021.
Chen: Yes.
Chakrabarti: Okay. So why now? Events have led China’s prominent leaders, including President Xi Jinping, to speak of the need to support and grow quote-unquote family culture in China.
Chen: So, the way I would characterize this is to situate China’s family planning policy within a longer, larger history. I mean, I know the one-child policy is actually very well-known here in the United States, but it’s often portrayed as: This is typical of Chinese authoritarianism and communism.
However, this is somewhat of a misunderstanding. In fact, during China’s Republican era, and most of the Communist and Mao eras in China, especially in the early years, the Chinese government had a clear pro-natalist policy. It was partly as a moral consideration as a way to police sexuality.
On the one hand, this is very true, as Mao Zedong famously stated, more people equals more productive power, and even more so, including how a larger population is considered a strategic asset in times of war. This is also due to the famous statement that it is equivalent to a cross-commons. However, due to the rapid population growth in the mid-1950s; Another problem is the lack of resources and the inability of women to fully participate in production if they are constantly having babies.
Although the Chinese government has begun to implement family planning policies, Mao Zedong-era policies were largely uneven and inconsistent.
Chakrabarti: Yes.
Chen: So the one-child policy was really a product of reform-era China, which was trying to rebuild itself after the disaster of the Mao era. And it’s under a very science- and technologist-driven, technocratic form of governance, and as I said earlier, on the one hand, it’s necessary for China’s future that families have only one child. insisted.
On the other hand, it was also scientific. It was considered progress as a step towards modernity. And when this policy was first implemented in his 1979, at the end of 1971 and at the end of 1980, it was very difficult for families to have only one child, only her for everyone. It was a strict regulation. It was gradually relaxed in the 1980s, allowing ethnic minorities and some rural households to have up to two children.
Chakrabarti: Yes. Can I come in here for a moment? I would like to see this historical analysis continue a little longer. But when you say it was believed, technically, reducing the number of children to one in each family was considered a sign of modernization and national progress.
Could it be that essentially the need for additional workers decreased, evidence of the modernization of the nation, simply because it did not require as many people to work? Could you tell us more about why it was considered a sign of modernization?
Chen: That’s right. This is such a great question. Because at the time, as a matter of fact, as I said, it wasn’t actually demographers who played a key role in formulating this one-child policy, it was actually Chinese missile scientists, rocket scientists. Because he was a person. And many of them were influenced by these views coming from the West and Europe.
The idea that a large population, or an explosion or increase in population, places a heavy burden on the environment, ecosystem, social resources, and environmental resources. And it was also true that there were very clear eugenic views. That it was somehow connected to backward cultures, or that it was only in backward areas that people had more children.
And I also felt that these Chinese scientists had a very mechanistic view of the human body. So they actually literally used equations to calculate missile trajectories and predict population growth. There was also political pressure, not from the perspective of population size itself, but from the perspective of what per capita GDP China should reach by the end of this century.
Therefore, the projected economic growth and what kind of population would then be required were also calculated backwards. And these rocket scientists made these very crude calculations that were very effective. They came up with this one-child policy without considering these social, economic and cultural factors of having children.
And on the one hand, because of the history of the Mao Zedong era, social science was virtually destroyed. Natural scientists also faced persecution.
Chakrabarti: Yeah.
CHEN: But scientists were an almost unique group who worked in areas related to national defense, had access to resources, enjoyed political protection, and had high levels of social prestige. that they were also able to leverage scientific authority and political capital; And it was consistent with the sentiments of the Chinese leadership at the time that, after the disasters of the Mao era, science, not communism, was needed as the basis for new governance in the reform era. In other words, the introduction of the one-child policy in the early 1980s was the result of a combination of factors.
Chakrabarti: You are so amazing. Very attractive, Xiangyang. Again, I want to bring out a few little things so that people can really dig into the great thing you just said. This is because he said that in China after the Cultural Revolution, natural scientists and physicists were the majority of scientists.
correct? Because there was a very organized campaign by Mao Zedong to – you know – send a lot of cultural and social scientists to farmland, or worse? Is that correct? Or no? So please tell me I’m wrong.
Chen: On the one hand, it means that the social sciences have been destroyed, but I think it’s a little more nuanced.
On the one hand, it was seen as very ideological and very politically controlled. On the other hand, natural scientists were also persecuted. But while scientists working in national defense were this unique group with a certain level of protection, on the other hand, this one-child policy was very mathematically drawn and had an apolitical atmosphere. I had this idea because of this. Not only can it appeal to the masses, but it can also have a political appeal.
Chakrabarti: I see.
Chen: After the Mao Zedong era.
Chakrabarti: So this is a Chinese-style techno-utopianism, and we have a lot of it here in the United States.