iStock – credit: globalmoments
On September 25, 1980, China unleashed its brutal One Child Policy, under which the CCP’s “Womb Police” succeeded in limiting births through forced abortion, forced sterilization, and even infanticide. In 2009 they boasted that they had “prevented” 400 million births through the One Child Policy – their contribution to the fight against global warming! I believe that the total number of lives “prevented” through forced abortions and sterilizations today is likely closer to 500 million.
The One Child Policy shifted to a Two Child Policy in 2016 and to a Three Child Policy in 2021. Through all these policy shifts, the CCP has maintained the right forcibly to abort out-of-plan or “illegal pregnancies.” Now, the CCP finds that it is facing a population decline that is as devastating as it is irreversible. Apparently, the CCP thought that it could simply relax the policy and count on people suddenly wanting to have more children. Not so. The Two and Three Child Policies have failed to deliver the increase in births desired by the CCP, and now China faces a demographic disaster.
Earlier this year, Sichuan Province announced that it was lifting all birth restrictions, allowing all couples – and even single parents — to have as many children as they want. The rest of China should follow suit.
Why did Sichuan make this move? Demographers have long predicted that, due to the demographic devastation caused by the One Child Policy, China would eventually suffer a demographic decline. This decline in work force will have devastating economic consequences. The decrease in the labor force will stifle China’s ability to support its “severely aging society.” Indeed, demographers forecast that by 2035, 400 million people – 30 percent of the population — will be 60 and above. The CCP has no ability to support this swiftly aging population.
Nevertheless, many couples are choosing to have no children at all. Indeed, the Zero Covid policy has driven some young couples to despair. One such couple in Shanghai was confronted by covid police dressed in hazmat suits, known as “Big Whites,” who attempted to drag them away to a quarantine camp because they had had contact with someone who tested positive. The police threatened three generations of their family, to which the husband calmly replied, “We are the last generation.” This indictment of life under the tyranny of the CCP – expressed by the refusal to bring children into this world — went viral in China.
iStock – credit: rweisswald
Under the Three Child Policy, it remains illegal for women to have a fourth child, or to give birth if unmarried. China has announced that it will no longer enforce fines on couples who have more children than permitted. What about single parents? Further, will the relaxation of the rule apply to Uyghur families in Xinjiang, or will it apply only to Han Chinese? Countless couples in Xinjiang have been placed into “labor camps” for having “too many children.” Their children have been removed from their parents and placed in orphanages and boarding schools.
Credible reports exist that the CCP is practicing forced abortion and involuntary sterilization in Tibet as well.
Because of son preference, most babies aborted in China have been female; there are an estimated 35 million more males living in China than females. This gender imbalance is driving sexual slavery within China and from surrounding countries. The sex-selective abortion of some females leads to the sexual slavery of others. There is no more violent form of gender discrimination than gendercide, the real war on women.
Meanwhile, in the Chinese countryside, impoverished women are still being pressured to “give away” their baby girls or are struggling to feed them.
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has enabled hundreds of women in the Chinese countryside to keep and feed their infant daughters through our Save a Girl Campaign.
Given China’s desperation to increase the birth rate, maintaining the Three-Child Policy – or any other coercive population control policy — is preposterous. The CCP needs to retire its Womb Police. It is reprehensible to dictate to women how many children they can have, no matter the number.
We call upon the CCP to end all coercive population control, to make forced abortion and sterilization illegal, including in Xinjiang and Tibet, and to institute effective measures to save girl children, immediately. We call upon them to release all parents in Xinjiang who are currently in detention camps because they have “too many children.”
