China's One Child Policy

China’s one child policy is a classic example of the oversimplification of a complex issue. The overreliance on numbers and scientific thought as opposed to a more balanced approach resulted in the adoption of a policy that infringed upon the rights of Chinese women to control their own reproductive rights. While the one child policy allowed China to slow down their population growth at an unprecedented speed it is important to analyze the effects the policy had that are not quantitative. The policy yielded a number of positive results which should not be discounted. However, it is crucial to understand what was lost as a result of the policy. Though the policy has been recently overturned it still offers valuable insight on how to juggle individual …show more content…
Faced with the dilemma of balancing increasing population growth and economic success China began a series of birth limitation campaigns. Understanding he development of China’s one child policy out of this dilemma relies on a very intricate understanding of Chinese culture and policy at the time. Within thirty-six years China implemented four separate birth limitation campaigns. The first two campaigns “were relatively limited, ineffective efforts that were halted by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution”. In order to support the transition of China moving from an agricultural society to a socialist communist society Mao embraced the idea of “the more people, the stronger we are.” During this period population control was pushed to the side in favor of the pursuit of a much more industrialized …show more content…
This shift and the general admiration of Western science played a large role in the creation of the one child policy. Using mathematical estimations and computer technology to predict the future of population growth, a specific group of population scientists called the Song group garnered attention of population policy makers. A natural science approach was appealing considering it was much more concrete than its social science counterparts. This change in the nature of population science was “important, for the mathematician’s equations treated people like numbers to be manipulated from a center of control.” Rather than using a balance of both natural science and social science it became choosing one over the