China's Colorful Family Planning Propaganda

Last week, the Chinese government unveiled new plans to relax the one-child policy, meaning that couples in single-child families can apply to have a second child. This news became one of the most publicized decisions made by the Chinese government at the Third Plenary Session which concluded on November 12.

At a press conference held on November 11, a spokesperson from the National Family Planning Commission, the agency responsible for implementing the one-child policy, stated that over the past nearly 40 years, the commission has prevented the birth of approximately 400 million newborns. This data has been questioned by scholars and research institutions because the one-child policy was officially implemented in 1979, while other more lenient family planning policies had already been in place since 1971.

Mao Yuqun, the spokesperson for the Family Planning Commission, said that China's population of 1.3 billion is facing many developmental issues. If family planning had not been effectively enforced at the time, China's current population would have exceeded 1.7 to 1.8 billion, exacerbating social problems.

According to the new regulations, couples who wish to have a second child still need to apply for approval from the local government, and this policy will be more inclined towards "original couples." The regulations do not specify a concrete implementation timeline, which means that some provinces may implement the policy later than others.

The enforcement of the policy is inconsistent, mainly due to wealthy individuals circumventing the law by paying large fines, bribing government officials, or failing to report the birth of a second child. Many wealthy people have their children born abroad or in Hong Kong, where they live with relatives overseas. This trend has prompted the Hong Kong government to recently reduce the quota for non-Hong Kong residents giving birth in public hospitals.

"My parents originally planned to have a boy, but after having me, my mother could not publicly have a second child," said Li Fang, a 27-year-old female software engineer whose father is a civil servant in the Henan provincial government. "To avoid attention, my mother went into hiding before giving birth to my younger brother, who was raised by our relatives and later sent to boarding school in the United States."

In May last year, renowned Chinese director Zhang Yimou sparked controversy when it was revealed that he had relationships with four women and was the father of seven children. However, such situations are quite common in China: an article published by Xinhua News Agency in 2007 indicated that between 2000 and 2005, 1,968 officials in Hunan province violated family planning regulations.

The enforcement of the one-child policy in urban and suburban areas of China has been particularly uneven. Historically, increases in household income and urbanization have directly led to a decline in birth rates. Couples in some developed eastern cities in China prefer to have only one child.

However, in rural areas of China, the enforcement of family planning has been especially coercive, leading to widespread illegal abortions and sterilizations. High fines for exceeding birth quotas have placed a heavy burden on many rural families in China. Moreover, the long-standing preference for boys in rural areas has exacerbated the occurrence of selective abortions and even infanticide.

For tourists visiting Chinese cities, it is almost impossible to see any traces of the family planning policy. However, in rural areas, the policy constitutes an important aspect of local lifestyles. Each village has a family planning service center for handling abortion cases, and local officials closely monitor changes in the population. Unlike the abundance of commercial advertisements in Chinese cities, small villages in China use state-funded family planning advertisements to plaster walls, commonly emphasizing the importance of family planning for national economic development, challenging traditional male-preference mindsets to prevent selective abortions.