Chen Guangcheng’s Remarks on China’s One Child Policy — The Heritage Foundation

On October 9, 2014, Rep. Chris Smith, celebrated activist Chen Guangcheng, and Women’s Rights Without Frontiers President Reggie Littlejohn spoke at an event at The Heritage Foundation entitled “China’s One Child Policy: A Discussion on valuing women and girls in the 21st century.”   This heavily attended event was co-sponsored by The Heritage Foundation and Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.  The following is a transcript of the English translation of Mr. Chen’s remarks.

Chen Guangcheng’s Remarks

Heritage Foundation

October 9, 2014

Good evening everyone. I am honored to represent and talk about what the previous speaker’s observations are, and about the effects of the wrongdoings of the Chinese Communist Party regarding the One Child Policy. I am especially thankful to Mr. Smith and Ms. Littlejohn for their support during the difficult years when I was in prison, as well as when I was under house arrest in China. I also thank all of you who support the Chinese human rights cause. During my 2005 personal investigation in China, I found in my native county and neighboring counties that there were over 100,000 women who had abortions unwillingly. After several decades of the One Child Policy implementation and the use of forced abortion, the Chinese people live in an atmosphere of fear of the government.  Through all these years of policy implementation and propaganda, the Chinese Communist Party wants the Chinese people and the public to know that they have to follow their orders in family planning policy or one child policy implementation or else they will suffer and pay a huge price for what they call the violation of the rules. My numbers show that as many as 650,000 people, including neighbors and relatives of those forced to have an abortion, have suffered. This is what Mr. Smith mentioned during his speech about the horrible crimes that are being committed against the Chinese people. I will provide more information on this later on.

The Chinese One Child Policy implementation and propaganda has demoralized the Chinese society, switching it from a society that highly values life to a social decay where society looks down on and has a contempt for the individual lives of human beings. In many cases, the women feel hopeless when faced with forced abortion. They dry their tears and their neighbors and relatives often suffer.  They are beaten by the local government officials who are implementing this inhumane policy. I can give you an example that I know from a neighboring village. There was a couple, and the wife was pregnant without a permit. She was summoned by the local government to get an abortion. But she and her husband refused, so they were taken by local government officials on a truck. During the trip, the husband was taken off the truck and beaten on the ground. He was then returned to the back of the truck and they continued to the clinic where the women received a forced abortion. The couple was returned to their home where they were left hopeless, without anyone to take care of them after suffering a beating and forced abortion.

This is just one of those tens of thousands of examples of people who have suffered such inhumane treatment in China. Whenever there is a family planning policy implementation ordered from the government for a specific town, the neighbors and villagers are so scared they do not feel safe staying in their own houses. They will leave their own homes bringing just a few clothes, and they will stay overnight in an open field to escape from the local family planning policy officials. It seems as if they are in a warzone. Even with such horrible events happening everywhere and every day, since 1992 the Chinese central propaganda department has issued a notice and policy that bans the media from reporting on these things. Whenever a forced abortion occurs, the party chief, who is the top administrator in China, orders the police department and the courts system not to touch these cases. There is no law in place to protect the people.

I also want to elaborate on the effect of Chinese human rights on the overall human civilization. Ever since the Communist Party took power, two things have simultaneously occurred. The power elite have grabbed wealth through violence, and with this violence they rule the country. They fight against each other in their quest for power, which has led to the occurrence of the horrible cultural revolution, which happened from 1966 to 1976. The grab for wealth and material benefits in the 1980s has caused huge corruption in Chinese society. This is also the reason why students took to the streets in 1989 to demand freedom and democracy, which the Communist Party stopped with a bloody crackdown. It seems to me that the Communist Party is allowing its ruling elite, what is called the Peoples’ Authoritarian Dictatorship, to do whatever they like to obtain wealth and power, which has led to the corrupted officials being the way that they are now. We can see the corruption is getting even worse on a larger scale — from the 1980s when about 10,000 yuan (which is literally maybe a few hundred dollars at that time), to today’s millions and millions of dollars, which in Chinese yuan is billions. Now the people have no hope for an honest government; and the least they want is for the government to reveal its wealth and the personal wealth of its top officials to the public.

I want to emphasize here that the Communist Party does not represent China, and especially not the Chinese people. It is just now that they have become a public enemy of the Chinese people. I believe that we have underestimated the threat from Communist regimes like the one in China. They are many times more dangerous than terrorist groups, and I believe that people only will realize this later. In Chinese culture we have a saying that your home is your castle, and even a king will not be allowed to come in without the homeowner’s permission. But now, Thank you very much.

View a video of the original event on October 9, 2014 at The Heritage Foundation:

China’s One Child Policy: A Discussion on valuing women and girls in the 21st century

http://www.heritage.org/events/2014/10/one-child-policy

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