Zedong's One Child Policy Essay

On September 25, 1980, the Chinese Communist Party established a one-child policy (“History of the One-Child Policy”). The one-child policy indicated that the ethnic majority, Han Chinese, were only allowed to have one child per family. The policy also included regulations regarding the size of the family and late marriages (Hesketh). Late marriages where considered marriages between a women who were 23 years old or older and men who were 25 years old or older. The policy was first presented by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, but it did not come into effect till1980 (Connett). The one-child policy was a result of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward plan, which was a plan established in 1958 to modernize China’s society. Zedong tried to modernize China’s society by supporting a family-centered society, which included bigger households. His resulted in China having a population whose need exceeded its food supply. By 1979, China’s population was estimated to be 970 million citizens. Approximately 300 million Chinese citizens had died because of the …show more content…
The demographic crisis is considered the “4-2-1” problem where one child takes on the responsibility to care for two parents and four grandparents (“History”). The “4-2-1” problem is continuously expanding because of the great gender imbalance and that there are a small amount of people to care for these elderly citizens. The policy ultimately caused a gender imbalance which then lead to this demographic crisis of an aging population. Connett assumed “by 2030 a quarter of the population will be over 60 years old.” Because of the increasing aging population, the work force has been declining. More children are forced to care for their family members at a young age which provokes them to enter into the work field. If China continues to have a declining work force, it will drastically affect the country’s