My Beautiful Orchid

It must be remembered that in the Confucian worldview, the superiority of men was not merely a social value—it was part of the order of Heaven and carried with it a profound moral and religious significance that the patrilineal line sustained. Ancestors were deified and ancestor worship was common. There was an annual ceremony known as Ching Ming where one paid homage to one’s ancestors through prayer and the offering of food and symbolic money at family shrines and gravesites.  Even today there are many clan temples throughout China (we visited the Chen Clan temple in Guangzhou) and Ching Ming is still celebrated.

Without male heirs, there are no ancestors—and no rightful place in the order of Heaven.

The importance of this worldview to the Chinese cannot be underestimated. Acknowledged or not, it has shaped their culture for over 2000 years and still provides the moral foundation of nearly 75 percent of China’s population. Even in urban areas where it has largely fallen by the wayside, it remains more influential than many will admit. It’s little wonder that even today peasants commonly refer to the birth of a daughter as xiǎo xǐ, (“small happiness”) and the birth of a son as dà xǐ, (“big happiness”). As one peasant woman sadly, but faithfully stated in a recent documentary, “daughters are not family—they’re relatives”.

The One-Child Policy

Deeply rooted as the Confucian tradition is in China, by itself it doesn’t explain the abandonment of infant girls. Benevolence, or Rén, was a core Confucian value and the duty of all Elders. Chinese families certainly loved their daughters no less than anyone else and could always have more children until the required male heir came along.

That is, they could until fertility became a national problem. China’s population woes are formidable. Their year 2000 census yielded a population of 1.266 billion, an increase of 132 million since 1990. This estimate did not take into account unregistered citizens (including missing girls) and is known to contain significant errors. The World Health Organization reported a year 2003 population of 1.312 billion, but even this was likely to have been low. By 1998 China had succeeded in lowering their birth rate to 1.8 births per couple, but high fertility during the 60’s and 70’s produced a large population of child-bearing couples today that continues to erode this decline. Another 800 million urban Chinese are expected by 2020 and with a shift toward aging and urbanization. More than 400 new cities are being currently planned to accommodate them. In Claire’s home province of Sichuan alone, nine will be completed by 2010, each of which will accommodate populations of over 1 million. These changes are coming at a time when China’s current population is straining environmental and natural resources almost to the breaking point. Development continues to ravage ecosystems across the continent at rates unprecedented in the West, impacting quality of life, local economies, and public health. In 2003 seven of the world’s ten most polluted cities were in China and according to some estimates more than 600 million Chinese now drink water contaminated with animal and human waste. But with less than one-tenth the per-capita energy consumption of the United States, China has fewer conservation options. If current trends continue, they will not see a decrease in population until the middle of this century—a juggernaut that promises to tax their economic and natural resources even further in decades to come.

In the late 70’s Deng Xiaoping realized that realized that economic development and population were interrelated—if China was to recover from the failures of Maoist policies and prosper, it must control its burgeoning population. In 1979 he responded to these concerns by implementing what may be the most ambitious, and repressive, population planning effort in recent history—the “One-Child” policy which limited couples to one successful pregnancy for life. Like most of Beijing’s 20th century reform efforts, the policy was brought to bear in every socio-economic arena with rigid, highly centralized control. Population planning became a central concern in every area of state planning and socio-economic development. Propaganda campaigns were launched praising the virtues of only-children and their benefits to families and society. Billboards touted round, healthy children of proud parents—“little emperors” who thrived because of the extra attention they received as only-children. When it was first implemented, the policy faced widespread resistance, which Beijing had not anticipated. To ease the transition and preserve public peace, they relaxed it somewhat in the early 80’s and granted Provincial authorities more flexibility in how it was implemented. By 1988 “one-child” restrictions were the exception rather than the rule in rural regions.

At first, enforcement varied from strict to almost non-existent. But by the mid 80’s Beijing concluded that their population targets were not being met, and they impatient with the lack of progress and what they considered “remnant feudal ideas”. In response, they began enforcing the “relaxed” policy with an iron fist. Like most programs under China’s communist government, regulation was highly centralized. Beijing imposed strict population targets and left local authorities to achieve them as they saw fit. At the lowest level this fell upon cadres in charge of individual danwei—the unit or institution each citizen belonged to. Cadres who did not meet targets were denied bonuses and promotions, and their danwei (typically agricultural in rural areas) could not be designated as “Advanced Units”—a ranking that carried with it many privileges and beneficial connections. A nationwide crackdown ensued as cadres sought to meet their danwei’s quotas. Those that previously allowed peasant families to negotiate their situation and gain at least a minimally favorable outcome in allowed births no longer did so. Households were frequently “monitored” for reproductive compliance. Couples in violation of quotas were subjected to ruinous fines, and in many cases coerced abortion, sterilization, or IUD implants. By 1990 birth planning efforts at the danwei level had become well organized and intense, particularly in southern provinces where resistance to the One-Child policy was strong.

The result was often brutal. According to some estimates, millions of Chinese women have been forced to have abortions (many of which were late-term), sterilizations, and IUD implants, even under unsafe conditions. Because implementation had been left almost entirely in the hands of local cadres, Beijing had little ability to oversee their activities or respond to public needs in rural provinces. By the late 80’s abandonment rates for infant girls had skyrocketed and the national gender ratio shifted even further toward boys. The increases were most visible in rising intake rates at Social Welfare Institutes. Kay Ann Johnson (2004) examined intakes at the Wuhan Foundling Hospital in Hubei Province where abandonment rates have historically been high. During the 70’s WFH’s intake rate was 50 to 80 annually. Most of these were canji—or disabled in some way (including non-crippling disabilities like cleft palates). By 1988 intakes had risen to 300 per year. In 1992 WFH received more than 1200 abandoned girls. Unlike the 70’s most were healthy, and some were as old as five. Local cadres often contributed to the problem. With peasants angry at being denied sons and Beijing demanding progress, they found themselves caught in the middle. Corruption was rampant. Couples reaching their quota without a son would report a pregnancy as miscarried or stillborn and then abandon it or secretly arrange an adoption. Such claims were difficult to verify, particularly where migrant populations were high. Even those that were demonstrably false were often ignored. With bonuses and promotions at stake, few cadres were anxious to have any over-quota pregnancies on their records. The temptation to look the other way was considerable and many reported total family size only. In some cases cadres were even known to have assisted with undercover adoptions and the transport of unwanted infants to regions outside of their jurisdiction where they could be abandoned “off the record”. To this day it’s very likely that most of China’s abandoned girls, including Claire, were born hours away from where they were left.

Since its inception the One-Child policy has proven to be one of the 20th century’s most inhumane and counterproductive national efforts. Few would dispute the severity of China’s population growth problem, or their need to address it at the national level. But by imposing totalitarian family planning restrictions with little sympathy or understanding toward those who were forced to bear their consequences, Beijing created even worse humanitarian and foreign policy problems and ironically, did little to solve their population woes. Official statements repeatedly tout the “success” of the policy, but the evidence suggests otherwise. It is true that China’s total fertility rate (TFR) has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years and according to some estimates may even be below replacement level. Bur most of this decline happened during the 70’s—before the One-Child policy was implemented and less repressive family planning policies were in place. Though TFR did continue to decrease during the 80’s and 90’s, the declines were minimal at best and China’s population growth rate remained at the mid-70’s level of 1.5 percent annually until well into the 90’s. ³ In fact, during the same period most other Asian nations achieved greater reductions in TFR despite having similar population problems and rural poverty levels. In each case the declines were the direct result of economic development, increasing literacy rates, and family planning services emphasizing education and access to contraception. ⁴ Indeed, it is a well established fact that poverty and low literacy rates are the best known predictors of high birth rates. Had Beijing done likewise, and provided a viable social security apparatus in rural areas they would almost certainly have achieved even lower TFR rates without creating a humanitarian disaster!