Why experts question whether China's one-child policy was necessary in the first place

BEIJING (AP) — China's one-child policy, one of the harshest attempts at population control the world has seen, forced abortions on women, made sterilization widespread and led to baby daughters being sold or even killed, because parents wanted their only child to be a male.

Now, experts say, the question is whether it was all necessary. China's birth rate fell to record lows last year and its population has fallen for four years in a row, official statistics showed this week. Authorities, alarmed by the prospect of a shrinking workforce and an aging population, scrapped the policy in 2015.

“It’s hard to escape the fact that China demographically shot itself in the foot,” said Mei Fong, the author of the 2016 book, “One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment.”

Population growth as a threat

China's leaders saw unbridled population growth as a potential threat in 1980 — to both economic development and its ability to feed what had grown into a nation of 1 billion people.

The then impoverished country wasn’t the only one worried about having too many people at the time. Population control was a hot topic internationally and experts feared that rapid growth in China, India and elsewhere could overwhelm the earth’s resources.

The birth rate had begun to fall in the 1970s after the government began encouraging people to have fewer children. It's unclear how much its fall since then resulted from the one-child policy and to what degree it would have happened anyway because of the tremendous economic and societal changes over the last four decades.

Stiff fines and sterilization

But the leadership at the time decided to curb population growth more directly, launching the one-child policy and enforcing it with stiff financial penalties for parents who had more than one child, as well as abortions and sterilization campaigns. It lasted for 35 years.

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that the number of people getting sterilized plunged from 1.4 million women and 180,000 men in 2014, two years before the policy was eased, to 190,000 women and 2,600 men in 2020.

In 2016, the government began allowing two children per couple and raised the limit to three children in 2021. But it has proven more difficult to reverse the mentality of people than the policy.

‘Little emperors’

China is far from the only country facing the challenges of an aging population. Around the world, as people get wealthier, they tend to want fewer, or no, children.

But the one-child policy, leading to a preference for sons, has also created a gender imbalance in the one-child generation.

Now, some from that generation, once dubbed “little emperors” because they were so fussed over, face the pressure of meeting the expectations, including financial, of being the only child.

As they reach their 30s and 40s, there is only one child to support two parents, and in some cases, up to four grandparents. For some, this can lead to anxiety and depression, Fong said.

“The little emperor at some point becomes the slave,” she said.

Putting a tax on condoms

China is an aging society that will likely face a major shortfall in the coming decades: not enough people of working age to support a growing population of retirees. That could burden government finances and pension systems.

The government has launched a slew of polices to try to boost the birth rate, from eliminating a tax exemption for condoms to giving cash subsidies to couples who have children. But the experience of other countries shows that it's difficult to turn around a declining birth rate.