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China To Ease One-Child Policy
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Anne Thurston speaks to IRP Fellows about China's One-Child Policy |
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23, 2001 - China is easing its decades-old and controversial one-child family policy, an expert on China's rural areas told IRP Fellows today.
Anne Thurston, an associate professor of China Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), told IRP Fellows the Chinese "government is now officially backing away from the policy and introducing a new policy which allows everyone to have two children." Thurston said the government had given up on enforcing the policy in the countryside, and supervision of the policy was dependent on local officials.
"The population of China is now somewhere over 1.3 billion people, and the land to population ratio is very disadvantageous," said Thurston, a scholar and writer who has traveled throughout China for the past 20 years.
Thurston said the one-child policy in force for China's urban residents has created the "inverted pyramid" problem. "There is a small number of younger people trying to support a larger number of older people in China and there is no social security system in China," she said.
Rural to urban migration has also increased the problem of overpopulation in the cities, Thurston said. In recent years "100 to 120 million people have left the countryside to go to work in towns and cities," she noted. Increase in crime and strained relations between urban people and government are the results of the migration, Thurston said.
The spread in China of the free-market economy has fueled concerns over price controls and integrity of vendors. Thurston said many Chinese feel they must "protect themselves from being cheated." There is a tremendous amount of corruption in China, including among government officials, she said.
Many Chinese today feel the situation in the country is "too chaotic." The notion of "luan," or chaos in the Chinese culture is an ancient one, Thurston said. Although individuals' definitions of what constitutes chaos may differ, Thurston cited overpopulation, the development of the free-market economy, and the search for new values as reasons for many Chinese people's sense of instability.
The resurgence in traditional folk religions is part of the search of new values, the third component of the chaos. In addition to the widespread Falun Gong movement, she said, "people are rebuilding Buddhist and Daoist temples" and there is an increase in Christianity "without the intervention of foreign missionaries."
Copyright © 2005 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.