Austin McNeill
2/27/07
GLR #3
Unwanted Girls
In China today families are still disposing of baby girls. When I say disposing I mean some are literally disposed of. Many babies have been found in dumpsters and there are actually some that are found still alive. Some of the Chinese people in mostly rural areas believe that girls are not as valuable as boys because they can’t do as much physical labor as the boys. The reason that they have to do this is because the government put into place a One-Child Policy. It was made active by Deng Xiaoping, who was the Chinese Communist leader, in 1979(China’s One). This policy is so that the can help control their population. There are many things that have been done to try to decrease the numbers of girls that are given away or deserted. Another thing that is becoming more popular is called sex-selective abortion which is abortion after finding out the sex of a baby so that you get what you want.
There are many things that are wrong with this policy. People who do not cooperate with this policy can be destroyed. What I mean by that is that their lives can be torn apart by extreme fines and other things like destruction of property. If you do not pay your fines then they will find you and they could put you in prison and/or even torture you. Anyone who has a child and is not married is also committing a crime and will be punished. Basically only upper level families can afford to have more than one child. A lot of rural families have many girls and get rid of them in chances of having more boys to work the land (SPUC).
I took a trip to china this year and from my personal experience I saw many things. My expectations were to go over there and see mostly boys. It seemed like they were in equal proportions but that is also because I was more in the more modern areas including Shanghai and Beijing. In these areas the proportions are more equal but if I would have went out into different areas then I am sure that it would have been more noticeable. The thing about this One-Child Policy that I have noticed from researching it is that the government doesn’t care about the sex ratio. They are strictly trying to lower their population growth percentage. When I was there I noticed that there was still a good amount of poor people and I felt extremely bad for them because I saw people without legs and some without arms begging for a few coins. I feel like they should stop worrying and putting so much effort in the population and put more time and effort into controlling their poverty of their population.
The One-Child Policy is an on going debate with no end until the policy is stopped. One debate about the policy is that it is extremely strict and it is for those who do not follow it. There are also rewards for families who do follow it. It has been amended a bit since it was first introduced. One way is that if a married couple is made up of two single children then they can have two children without any repercussions. Also it depends now on the region in which you live for how many children you can have. In a recent analysis about two-thirds of China is now restricted by the policy now (Asia Pac).
Works Cited
China's One Child Policy- http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/onechild.htm
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
http://www.spuc.org.uk/lobbying/china/
Asia Pacific
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/stored/pdfs/api077.pdf
