The universal principle that “evil begets evil” finds a haunting realization in the legacy of China’s family planning era. During Peng Peiyun’s decade-long tenure, when she headed the National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, a system was established that tore apart families with the most aggressive enforcement and commodified the lives of the unborn.
Tracing the history of China’s birth control policies reveals a shift from early encouragement of the pre-One-Child Era (1950s-1978) to extreme coercion through the mandatory One-Child Policy (1979-2015), and finally to a desperate attempt to reverse a shrinking population with the Policy Reversal in 2016.
Agony of the Shidi
According to official CCP statistics and scholars, the number of bereaved families who lost their only child in China is at least over 1 million, and is still increasing by 76,000 every year. This means that more than 2 million heartbroken parents (Shidi) are living in agony. At the time, many young Chinese people, in response to the CCP’s call for “Having one child is good, the state will provide for your old age, voluntarily opted for sterilization after the birth of their first child.
Unexpectedly, when people reach middle age or old age, their only child passes away unexpectedly. Chinese people value raising children to provide for old age and to carry on the family line, so losing one’s only child means losing both of these. Earlier reports in China described the lives of elderly people who had lost their only child. These elderly people were afraid to go to parks, fearing the sadness of seeing others with their grandchildren.
They dared not celebrate New Year’s Day because those days were the hardest for them; their house was cold and empty, with only black-and-white photos of children hanging on the walls. Some of these bereaved elderly people are bedridden, without even someone to bring them water. Due to the millions of families who have lost their only child, the CCP’s family planning policy has also caused another enormous negative consequence, which is a severe imbalance in the gender ratio of China’s population.
The demographic imbalance and the bachelor crisis
In China, especially in rural areas, people not only hold the traditional belief in carrying on the family line, but also face the necessity of a labor force within the family, leading to a strong desire for a son. Under the one-child policy, these ordinary rural families are forced to make choices regarding the sex of the fetus.
With the widespread adoption of ultrasound technology, a large number of female babies have been aborted or even abandoned immediately after birth. Even now, in many parts of China, the birth rate of male babies far exceeds that of female babies. Consequently, China has long faced one of the world’s most severe gender ratios in the birth population.
According to official data, China has over 30 million more males than females. In other words, at least 30 million men in China are without marriage partners. They are known as bachelors and are primarily concentrated in rural, impoverished areas. This issue not only presents a marriage problem, but also poses serious social security risks, including the rise in human trafficking.
The ‘Chained Woman’ incident
The 2022 discovery of Li Ying in Jiangsu Province — chained by the neck after being trafficked and forced to bear eight children — exposed the dark underbelly of a society where women have become a commodity to fill the gaps created by state engineering.
Li Ying, a girl from Nanchong, Sichuan, was abruptly kidnapped, resold, and subjected to endless abuse. She was then sold to Dong Zhimin, a villager in Dongji Village, Fengxian County, Jiangsu Province. She lived her life in a dark hut, unable to leave. Behind this shocking incident, which reverberated throughout the nation and even the world, lies a horrific industry chain fuelled by a bachelor crisis — the trafficking of women.
The inability of rural men to find wives has spawned a large number of human traffickers who abduct and sell women and children, even sourcing brides from countries like Vietnam and Myanmar. Analysts have pointed out that when a society has a large number of unmarried, idle, and marginalized young men, the risks of violent crime, sexual offences, and social unrest rise dramatically, like a giant powder keg ready to explode at any moment.
Social maintenance fees: Murder as a business
The CCP’s family planning policy not only killed hundreds of millions of young lives, but also created countless human tragedies for families. However, Peng Peiyun and her ilk completely disregarded these consequences in their designs. In their eyes, these were achievements of their allegiance to the CCP. Peng Peiyun was utterly indifferent to how many people were killed or how many families were destroyed, even finding pleasure in it, because these horrific human tragedies could be turned into a profitable business.
Letting the fish swim in the pond
Forced abortion murders have become a source of profit for CCP officials. Family planning officials in many places have devised an even more insidious method. It is called “letting the fish swim in the pond,” that is, deliberately waiting until the child is born before imposing fines to make profits from these murders.
In 2012, a mother in Zhenping County, Shaanxi Province, was seven months pregnant when the CCP authorities discovered her pregnancy was unauthorized. She was forced to pay 40,000 yuan as a “social support fee” — actually, a fine, as a way to purchase a birth permit.
Local regulations stipulated that those who could not pay the fine would be forced to have an abortion. She was arrested by local family planning officials and taken to a hospital, where she was forcibly injected with oxytocin. Soon after, she gave birth to a fully developed seven-month-old baby girl. Her family posted photos of her and the stillborn fetus online as evidence.
At the time, many families in China went into debt to have another child, especially a boy, and to raise the fines. However, how much was the total amount of these fines paid to family planning departments nationwide? Where did that money go? These questions have always remained a state secret of the CCP.
Slush fund
Wu Youshui, a lawyer who has long focused on family planning issues, once applied to 31 provincial family planning commissions across the country to disclose the whereabouts of these funds. The result was that, in 2012 alone, the family planning departments of 24 provinces had fines totaling more than 20 billion yuan (US$28,582,660) verified.
China has 34 provincial-level administrative regions and has implemented the one-child policy for over 40 years. How much in fines has the CCP collected in total? Some have done a simple calculation based on this scale, and the figure exceeds one trillion yuan. According to official CCP figures, China’s total GDP reached one trillion yuan for the first time in 1986, and the total amount of fines collected by the CCP over the decades for the one-child policy has already exceeded China’s 1986 GDP.
Where did this vast sum of money go? During his investigation, lawyer Wu Youshui discovered that the vast majority of the fines became slush funds for the local government, some became bonuses and benefits for local family planning officials, and some became a source of funds for CCP officials to indulge in extravagant spending on food, drink, and entertainment.
The era of Peng Peiyun established a cycle in which innocent lives were sacrificed for local revenue. Today, as China faces a shrinking workforce and a rapidly aging population, the CCP has shifted to a “Three-Child Policy.” However, no new policy can erase the decades of tears, the millions of missing daughters, or the “cold and empty” houses of the bereaved.
Translated by Chua BC and edited by Helen London
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