New | Traumas of China’s one-child era will live on in the two-child policy

I thought I would celebrate the abolition of China’s draconian one-child policy. Instead, it has reminded me vividly of the dark and unpleasant underbelly of China as a still-Communist country, and of the traumas inflicted in the name of the policy on literally hundreds of millions of Chinese and their families since introduction three and a half decades ago.

I have often tacitly condoned the one-child policy as an unpleasant necessity. Slowing population growth in the world’s most populous, and then one of the poorest, countries seemed such a priority that means justified the ends.

China’s leaders say the country’s population today would have been 400 million larger than the present 1.3 billion. They say poverty would still have been acute and widespread, and that the improved livelihoods seen by tens of millions of Chinese would never have been possible without the policy. It has been depicted as a difficult and courageous policy decision – a sort of “tough love”.

But as I am now reminded of the awful things condoned in the policy’s name, and the traumatising experiences of so many millions of families over so many years, I feel embarrassed by my complacency.

I am especially embarrassed when I note data from elsewhere in the world that suggests China’s population growth might probably have stalled anyway. In economies worldwide, the parallel developments of industrialisation, of urbanisation, of education for women, and improved access to contraception have also resulted in sharp declines in birth rates – without any of the draconian horrors enforced by China’s officials in the name of the One-Child Policy.

Worldwide, fertility rates have slumped from 3.9 to 2.5 between 1975 and 2015. Population increases have tumbled from 1.87 per cent per year to 1.2 per cent in the same period. While China’s contraction was sharp – from 1.76 per cent to 0.5 per cent – contractions elsewhere were equally sharp. Hong Kong’s population growth tumbled from 2.89 per cent a year to 0.75 per cent, and Japan’s from 1.6 per cent to negative 0.16 per cent.

Of course, people normally turn to India for comparisons of what might have been. Here, fertility rates still sit at 2.5 – down from a stratospheric 5 in 1975 – while population growth has just slowed to 1.2 per cent a year from 2.26 per cent. But India’s population remains agricultural and rural, and obstacles to better female education and access to contraception remain major challenges. It is arguable that industrialisation and urbanisation – and drawing women into the workforce – have played a much bigger role in steadying China’s population than officials acknowledge.