One-Child Policy Lifted for Quake Victims' Parents

1. Citation

One-Child Policy Lifted for Quake Victims’ Parents

New York Times

May 27, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/world/asia/27child.html?_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

2. Summary

This article discusses how parents who lost their children in the earthquake that recently took place in China will now be allowed to apply to the government to legally have another child, or make one of their illegal children a legal replacement. This is very important to the Chinese, as they are only legally allowed to have one child, which helps them to control their population that is growing too fast for them to handle. Since many children (about 10,000) died while at school during the earthquake, this change in policy is very important to many people, who still want to be parents. It has also brought up many issues though. Many parents have been questioning the government on why so many children were killed, and why the schools were not able to better protect them. It also made parents think about the one-child policy, and if it is really right of the government to enforce, considering that after many people had their first child, they had procedures to stop them from being able to have children. In this case, even though they are legally allowed to have more children with the new policy, it is physically impossible for them. One has to think that less people would have had these procedures if the one-child policy was not enforced by the government. It will be interesting to see what happens to the one-child policy in the near future. Although the times are changing, the one-child policy is a part of China’s culture, and culture is something hard to change.

3. Reactions

A) This article relates to the AP World History theme of Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities, including the emergence of the nation-state. This is because the government is changing their policies (or part of their structure) to accommodate for a recent event (the earthquake) that took the lives of many children, allowing parents to legally have another child if theirs was killed by the earthquake.

B) Population control has been an issue in China for a long time now. In order to keep the population in check, China’s government enforces a one-child policy, which began in 1979. Each family must “register” their children with the government. If the parents abide by the one-child policy, the government takes care of paying for necessities of the child, such as an education. If the parents do not follow the policy, they may have to pay for all expenses of that child. Parents can also be charged with steep fines.

C) The author of this article is a male named Andrew Jacobs, and most likely and American, considering that he writes for the New York Times.

D) The author indicates his point of view on the situation when he writes, “The anguish of parents and grandparents has been compounded by the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to control population growth.” This shows how he believes all because of the one-child policy, there are many people of have suffered extreme loss and sadness. It is understandable that he might feel this way, considering that while living in the Unites States, we are not exposed to policies that limit the size of a family.

E) One point of view that it might be helpful to hear from would be that of a person from another country who has a similar policy to China’s one-child policy. They could inform us of how the policy has positively or negatively affected their society, and would not be making rash judgments about the policy, like some Chinese, who are judging the policy now because of the loss of children in the earthquake.

F) In my opinion, I do not believe in the one-child policy, but I am happy that government is now stepping up to help the parents of victims of the earthquake, allowing them to still have a legal family. I think that living in the United States, I have a hard time believing that the government should be able to control how many children a person has. But, as I think about the situation more and more, it does make sense to form a policy like this if a population is expanding too rapidly, for it reduces problems, such as poverty, job shortage, and housing shortage, creating better living conditions for everyone. Even though this is true, I still don’t think the government should be allowed to restrict family sizes. People should just learn how to use their common sense, and not have more children than they, or the government, can handle.