One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

by Mei Fong

The one-child policy regulated births on the assumption that all this procreation was going on between married couples. There was little leeway for underage pregnancy, or unmarried mothers, or women who’d simply become pregnant before the official waiting period elapsed. If it didn’t fit the rules, the policy’s answer was almost always: pay or abort.

Sports insiders call this the “Big Ball, Small Ball,” theory, arguing that China can do well only in sports that emphasize precision and mechanization — “Small Ball” — but not in sports that need creativity and teamwork — “Big Ball.” Beyond sports, it’s become a metaphor for everything from China’s education system to its economic prowess.

This was the world into which China emerged after a decade of isolation following the Cultural Revolution. It was in a unique position. While places like India and Indonesia also imposed population curbs, only China had both the authoritarian political structure and the social and cultural readiness to push through these ideas on a grand scale. While Western scientists like the Club of Rome were expounding theories of population control as intellectual exercises, Chinese scientists were prepared to put these ideas into practice on a real population, with few to no fail-safe mechanisms.

Population control bukan konsep asing, bisa ditemukan di berbagai negara, tapi hanya China yang punya ekosistem yang tepat utk aplikasi konsep ini dalam skala besar.

The man who once advocated a two-child plan no longer believes there should be any restrictions at all. “I gradually realized it is not about giving birth to one or two children. It is about people making their own decisions.”

Gao also described a wage incentive for birth-planning officials, which was tied to how many sterilizations and abortions they were able to achieve. These bonuses could amount to as much as half their base pay, which was relatively modest. “That’s why everyone is so keen to arrest people. The more you arrest, the more bonus you earn,”she said. (Officials I interviewed in other parts of China also described similar bonus systems.) Even doctors would be incentivized to perform more abortions to increase the size of their bonus, said Gao. “Some girls were forced to get surgeries even though they weren’t pregnant at all,”she claimed.

Popular blogger Han Han, the Holden Caulfield of his generation, describes it thus: “Most parents won’t allow their school-age children to date, and many are even opposed to their children dating when in college, but as soon as the kid graduates, the parents pray that all of a sudden, someone perfect in every respect — and if possible with an apartment of their own to boot — will drop out of heaven, and their child must marry them right away. Now, that’s well thought out, isn’t it?”

Lol

Over the years as I came across these marriage markets, I noticed a trend in the ads: the men tended to be in their mid-twenties, without a college education. The women advertised tended to be older and better educated. This is not just because China’s legal age for marriage — again, twenty for women, twenty-two for men — creates a built-in expectation that men should seek younger (and presumably less established) mates. It is also of a piece with China’s deep-seated hypergamous culture, where women marry up and men marry down.