…leads to hiding babies and distributing them amongst relatives so as to avoid the authorities. A Chinese demographer therefore suggests the official statistics are wrong:
Liang has discovered discrepancies in China’s census. “In 1990, the national census recorded 23 million births. But by the 2000 census, there were 26 million 10 year-old children, an increase of three million,” he said. His findings suggest that the one-child policy may not have the grim consequences that have been widely predicted.
While I’d be glad to hear that’s true, it doesn’t change the grim nature of the one-child policy. Neither does it change past reports of seeing classrooms filled with boys, for example.
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Jennifer Derwey says
I think anytime the number of children one is allowed to have is a government issue, we should question it. It can only lead to prioritizing some children over others, so that those with disabilities or of a sex considered less valuable are overlooked in favour of stronger, both socially and physically, children. If we celebrate diversity, we should be against any numbered child policy.
This doesn’t only apply to China, who has written legislation, but also to those countries where it is ‘encouraged’ (mostly by Westerns with butter mountains and wine lakes) to have less children so as not to put pressure on limited resources. Those G8 academics came up with this, “Greater access to family planning would reduce population growth and impact favorably on resource availability.” (source: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/814373–academics-urge-g8-to-fund-measures-to-reduce-unsafe-abortion)