Child-bearing in China

Abstract

In May, 2008, China's one-child policy was brought savagely into the light when a powerful earthquake shook Sichuan province, robbing towns of a generation of (only) children. In a welcome move, local authorities in affected towns relaxed one-child restrictions for the bereaved and furious parents. But such a move was unprecedented in a country where the policy has become entrenched. In Just One Child, anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh uses the formulation of the one-child policy as a back-drop for a fascinating look at the pitfalls of allowing science to exist as an unchallenged purveyor of “truth”. She examines the historical context of Paramout Leader Deng Xiaoping's decision to adopt a population-control policy in the late 1970s, the conditions that led to three groups of social and natural scientists being invited to inform this policy, and the circumstances that dictated the uneven field on which they had to play. She then looks in detail at how their scientific findings were reached and the process by which the chosen group's proposals became policy. Set in the ivory towers of China's secretive leadership compound in 1979–80, the bare facts of this story are shocking. China's one-child policy was largely determined by the head of the natural science group, Song Jian, in his spare time from his role of working on missile guidance systems. Song repeatedly blinded senior policy makers with science and hoodwinked them into accepting questionable findings, to the extent that the Chinese Communist Party leadership actually invited Song to write the document that would impose his theories on the masses. In less than 2 years, Song's one-child per couple proposal became accepted as the only way to secure the country's economic and ecological survival. The prevailing atmosphere of China's craving for modernisation and Deng's inclination to draw on science to direct this process are nicely depicted. But I wish Greenhalgh had delved deeper into the personal rivalries at the heart of this story. More could also have been made of the looming shadow recently deceased leader Mao Zedong cast over proceedings. Greenhalgh's portrayal of how Song's natural scientists came to triumph over a social science community emasculated by Mao's treatment of them over previous decades is convincing. But when she refers to present-day situations of science dictating policy, Greenhalgh fails to refer to the role that a one-party system has in science's societal influence. Song's successful proposals were heavily influenced by the work of European population scientists in the late 1960s. However, this work had minimal impact in democratic Europe, where government-sponsored research is routinely subject to cross-party scrutiny. For Greenhalgh, “China's one-child policy is one of the most troubling social policies of modern times…[which] has induced social suffering and human trauma on a vast scale.” Yet China's unprecedented economic miracle has unarguably also been a humanitarian one: China accounts for the majority of the world's people lifted out of absolute poverty in the past 20 years. Deng's decision to seek a population-control policy was part of a wider programme with far-reaching social benefits. Casual western observers must also be cautious about judging the Chinese Communist Party's unthinkable (by western standards) intervention in people's lives; the Chinese have long exhibited a loyalty to their society that the west should not deride. It is saddening to read Greenhalgh's conclusion that in recent years China's adherence to the one-child policy has strengthened and been kept out of public debate. Meanwhile Song, having reaped the rewards of being the architect of the nation's population policy, still advises the government on this matter. Perhaps things will change. The loss for communities after the Sichuan earthquake and the well-known effects of the policy on maternal health, female infanticide, and an ageing population may have an effect. More likely it is the contrast between the regime's neglect of people's concerns in rural areas and the luminous economic success of its eastern regions that will stoke an already growing media appetite for expressions of discontent. This may encourage Chinese people to look afresh at why their child-bearing desires should be controlled by a government they were not entitled to choose.