5
The future of China's one-child policy
Fang Jin Xue (L) leaves school with her mother.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Kai Ryssdal: our Shanghai correspondent Scott Tong has been explaining the economics of China's one-child policy the law that limits Chinese parents to just one child. He's told us how and why the law came to be, what life is like for an only child in China and what it means for China's labor force and global prices. Today, the future of the one-child policy.
We've got Scott on the line from Shanghai to do that with us. Hello Scott.
Scott Tong: Hi Kai.
Ryssdal: So based on what we have heard from you in the past four days, one-child policy sort of does seem to have actually done what Beijing wanted it to do 30 years ago, right?
Tong: Well, what Beijing claims is that the policy has prevented 400 million births. More independent voices will tell you that the fertility rate might've gone down anyway for entirely different reasons. In 1980, when the policy came, every woman had about three babies. Now it's down to about 1.5. The original document reflected the idea that China had too many mouths to feed, and they wanted to control the population so they could have more to go around.
Now, here's the downside of what the policy has created. It has created this upside down ratio of old people to young people. Right now, about 15 percent of the population is over 65, but that's gonna double by 2050. Which is relatively OK for an advanced economy like the United States. But China, the fear is it's going to get old before it gets rich.
Ryssdal: Any sense then that the one-child policy might change at all?
Tong: Well, it actually has changed a little bit over the past 30 years. There are a bunch of exemptions to the policy -- ethnic minorities, some people in the countryside are allowed to have two children. It's pretty complicated. There are hints that more incremental loosening could be on the way. The argument for change goes something like this: The one-child policy came back in the day when China didn't have enough grain or capital or consumer goods.
Wang Fung is a Chinese-born demographer at the University of California, Irvine. And he says that is so 30 years ago.
Wang Fung: There's no shortage of capital in China anymore. There is no shortage of consumer goods anymore. So, the economy has changed, demography has changed. However, the policy has not changed.
Tong: Now, for its part, the government says the policy is going to stay in place for several more years.
Ryssdal: Even if it did change, though Scott, it's not like things would change tomorrow, right? It would take a while to turn this economy around.
Tong: It would take a while, if it turns things around. A lot of people I talked to in China don't want to have a second child; they say they can't afford it. And if you don't have enough young producers, that's an economic headwind that China is likely to have to deal with.
Ryssdal: Well, let me pick up on that for a minute, because you've been talking this week in your pieces about economic costs and benefits. But it sounds like the biggest problem to come in the future are future social.
Tong: Let me tell you a story: I was sitting on a raft, floating down a river, middle of nowhere China, a few months back. And the man who was pushing the raft, kind of the bamboo raft man, was showing me some of the houses in the countryside. And a few of them had a second floor, even a third floor. Then he said, "You know what? Those are the rich families. They're trying to show their wealth, so there sons could attract wives."
In those areas, families have savings rates that are going up. The bride price in those areas, the dowry, is going up. And that is because we have this imbalance between boys and girls. Right now, for every 100 baby girls born, 120 baby boys are born. Historically, many Americans know that Chinese families tend to favor boys. So in a decade, we're going to have tens of millions of men here who cannot find wives. So for all the people who think China is this economic colossus that has everything figured out, the one-child policy has created a lot of internal issues that China's going to have to deal with.
Ryssdal: Scott Tong in Shanghai for us, wrapping up a week's worth of coverage on China's one-child policy. He will be leaving China, Scott will, at the end of next month, coming back home, working in our Washington bureau for us. Scott, thanks a lot.
Tong: You're welcome.
It's interesting to me that your guidelines for submission say 'say on topic' when to me the general subject of population touchs on almost every subject that effects humans.
I think a policy that might have stopped 400 million people from being born means the CO2 contributions of 400 million people are not in the atmosphere.
Where would the rest of the world be if we all had a similar policy?
I just wanted to thank you, Scott, for all of the stories that he has done while he (and his family) were in China. You've done a great job illustrating not only the stories themselves but also the people involved in a nonjudgmental way. Your stories are about as good as it gets without physically going to China and getting to know the people to understand where they are coming from. My best wishes to you and your family in DC. Hopefully your daughter will enjoy a duel-country upbringing as much as I have.
I'd like to thank Scott Tom for bringing us so many interesting reports from China over the past years. I very much appreciate his well-balanced reporting. His cultural background has enabled him to put things in perspectives,attainable only by Scott, adding precious value the stories. Thank you, Marketplace for having Scott as your reporter, and thank you, Scott. We will miss you but we looking forward to more stories from you from D.C.
Very glad Scott did such a special report on the economic impact of China's one-child policy. Being an only-child born in the '70s in Shanghai, I can relate to some interviewees' perspectives and I witnessed (but not realized till much later) many drastic social changes together with the implementation of such a policy. For example, back in the early 80's in Shanghai, ration tickets were still required. The impact of the one-child policy was discussed in my middle-school and then high school history class classrooms but did not turn into reality until now, particularly whenever we go back to Shanghai, visiting, to face it. The report presents the reality of the Chinese society 30 years after the policy took effect.
Been enjoying listening to Marketplace and certainly been appreciating the reports from Shanghai and the rest of China. Thank you, Scott.
I listened with dismay to today's (6/24) broadcast about China's "one-child policy". It seemed irresponsible, at best, to discuss social policy as inhumane and repressive as China's merely in terns of its "economic implications". The way it was presented and discussued one might have thought that China's (one-child policy) isn't any more or less significant in its wider implications than, say, policies concerning banking regulations in the USA. I really don't think it serves the public interest to discuss this policy without making people aware of the forced sterilization and abortion and the removal of (unwanted - vis the Govt)children from their homes and parents that implementation of the policy entails. Something felt deeply wrong to me when listening to this academic presentation about a ghoulish social poicy that stands among the most shameful in the world today. I suppose this would be analogous to a purely economic analysis of Nazi social policy - I realize such discussions and analyses might be of interest to a tiny fraction of the listening audience that specializes in such things. But for the rest of us, to antiseptically discuss the policy only in terms of its economic implications is irresponsible.
Yours,
James Vivian
Enfield, CT
