Viewpoint
09.02.21
How Much Does Beijing Control the Ethnic Makeup of Tibet?
The idea of swamping, which the Dalai Lama himself elaborated in 2008, holds that China’s government has been seeking to solve its problems in Tibet and other “ethnic minority” areas such as Xinjiang by turning local indigenous ethnic groups (such...
Conversation
05.06.21
What Should China Do about Its Aging Population?
Though it has yet to be released, China’s latest ten-year census is certain to confirm what demographers have warned of for years: A labor crisis looms as the fertility rate remains low and the country ages at a dangerous speed. Five years after the...
Culture
02.06.20
What a Picture of China’s One-Child Policy Leaves Out
Brainwashed? Reflections on Propaganda in One Child NationBy Jie LiOne Child Nation, a documentary distributed by Amazon Studios which was shortlisted for an Academy Award, is becoming one of the most influential films about China in the United...
Conversation
01.08.20
China: The Year Ahead
As 2019 drew to a close, ChinaFile asked contributors to write about their expectations for China in 2020.
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08.08.18China Stamps Hint at Relaxation of Two-Child Policy with Large Piglet Family
Telegraph
Commentators noted that the scrapping of the decades-old one child policy in 2015, in favour of a two-child policy, was preceded by the release of a stamp for 2016, the Year of the Monkey, featuring two baby monkeys.
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03.20.18China’s Radical Plan to Limit the Populations of Beijing and Shanghai
Guardian
In the weaving alleys of Shanghai’s Laoximen district, swathes of residential buildings sit empty. The historic area in the heart of the city is being slowly demolished, and many residents have already abandoned it, leaving behind rows of...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.17An Inconvenient Truth? China Omits Key Figures That May Have Highlighted Its Demographic Time Bomb from Official Statistics
South China Morning Post
A key data series on China’s fertility rate has been axed from the country’s latest statistical yearbook, depriving the public of crucial figures to judge the effectiveness of the country’s two-child policy.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.20.17More Than 100 Chinese Cities Now above One Million People
Guardian
Government policy and a shift westward have fed the staggering scale of China’s urban ambitions—119 cities as big as Liverpool, and likely double that by 2025
ChinaFile Recommends
02.28.17China Considers Baby Bonus for Couples to Have Second Child
CNN
The Chinese government may consider giving families financial incentives to have a second child in a bid to reach higher birth rate targets
ChinaFile Recommends
02.14.17In China, a Lonely Valentine’s Day for Millions of Men
New York Times
That’s because China’s gender gap remains huge. There were 33.59 million more men than women in China in 2016, according to figures from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics that were issued last month
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01.23.17More Babies in China Worth Celebrating—but Mind the Data
Wall Street Journal
Official data shows women had the most children since 2000 in 2016
Caixin Media
12.15.16
Attempts to ‘Clean Up Beijing’ Target Low-Cost Migrant Homes
Li Yi, a young computer engineer working in Beijing, said authorities forced him out of his apartment in a village in Haidian district in November, days after his power supply was cut off even though he had paid the bills.Li (not his real name) is...
Caixin Media
12.05.16
‘Two-Child Policy’ Driving Mini Baby Boom in China
The number of children born in China this year is set to rise by 5.7 percent from 2015 as a result of the introduction of the country’s new two-child policy, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) Deputy Director...
Sinica Podcast
10.20.16
The Consequences of the One-Child Policy Will Be Felt for Generations
from Sinica Podcast
The first day of 2016 marked the official end of China’s one-child policy, one of the most controversial and draconian approaches to population management in human history. The rules have not been abolished but modified, allowing all married Chinese...
Caixin Media
12.14.15
Lack of Clear Policy Direction on Two-Child Rule Leaves Nation Guessing
Regional family-planning officials say the lack of clarity on when the new two-child rule will come into effect has put them in legal limbo, unable to issue birth permits to couples who conceive a second child before the new policy kicks in, leading...
Media
11.06.15
‘A Brutality Born of Helplessness’
When China finally scrapped its one-child policy after more than three decades of brutality, almost no one lamented its passing. But Paul R. Ehlich, a Stanford-educated biologist and author of the 1968 fear-baiting classic The Population Bomb, was...
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10.30.1520 Photos That Show How Insanely Crowded China Has Become
Business Insider
China has reportedly dropped its long-standing one-child policy, which was first enacted decades ago in an effort to curb overpopulation.The current population rests at around 1.4 billion after having the policy in place for over 35 years. Only time...
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07.27.15If China Wants More Children, It Needs to Get out of the Nation’s Bedrooms
Guardian
The social and economic impacts are well documented: the world’s most rapidly ageing population, a growing labour shortage, a heavy and unfunded pension burden, an unknown number of undocumented “illegal” children and a gender imbalance of...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.01.14Why China’s Second-Baby Boom Might Not Happen
Businessweek
Six months since China announced the loosening of its restrictive one-child population policy, it is still too early to judge the ultimate impact. But experts now express more modest expectations.
Books
07.31.14
Leftover Women
A century ago, Chinese feminists fighting for the emancipation of women helped spark the Republican Revolution, which overthrew the Qing empire. After China's Communist revolution of 1949, Chairman Mao famously proclaimed that "women hold up half the sky." In the early years of the People's Republic, the Communist Party sought to transform gender relations with expansive initiatives such as assigning urban women jobs in the planned economy. Yet those gains are now being eroded in China's post-socialist era. Contrary to many claims made in the mainstream media, women in China have experienced a dramatic rollback of many rights and gains relative to men.Leftover Women debunks the popular myth that women have fared well as a result of post-socialist China's economic reforms and breakneck growth. Laying out the structural discrimination against women in China will speak to broader problems with China's economy, politics, and development.—Zed Books {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
05.29.14China Scrambles to Adjust to Baby Boomlet
Wall Street Journal
China's health officials are taking steps to accommodate two million more births annually after a landmark decision last year to relax population controls.
Viewpoint
04.23.14
From Half the Sky to ‘Leftovers’
The three-plus decades since the inception of the ‘one child’ policy have resulted in a huge female shortage in China. The country is now seriously unbalanced, with 18 million more boys than girls. By 2020, there will be some 30 million surplus men...
Reports
03.25.14
Urban China
World Bank
This report recommends that China curb rapid urban sprawl by reforming land requisition, give migrants urban residency and equal access to basic public services, and reform local finances by finding stable revenues and by allowing local governments...
Sinica Podcast
03.01.14
In Line Behind a Billion People
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Damien Ma, author of In Line Behind a Billion People, a new book for China-watchers looking at how China’s lack of affordable housing, its food and air pollution, and the country’s poor education...
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01.23.14Beijing Population Tops 21 Million
Xinhua
This includes an estimated increase of 100,000 senior citizens every year until 2020.
Caixin Media
12.17.13
Are Changes to China’s Family-Planning Rules Too Little, Too Late?
Among the sixty areas covered in the Communist Party’s “decision” document released after the third plenum of the Eighteenth Central Committee, the most popular among ordinary people is a revision to the family planning policy to allow some couples...
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10.04.13Population Control Is Called Big Revenue Source in China
New York Times
Nineteen province-level governments in China collected a total of $2.7 billion in fines last year from parents who had violated family planning laws, which usually limit couples to one child, a lawyer who had requested the data said.
Viewpoint
03.19.13
For Many in China, the One Child Policy is Already Irrelevant
Before getting pregnant with her second child, Lu Qingmin went to the family-planning office to apply for a birth permit. Officials in her husband’s Hunan village where she was living turned her down, but she had the baby anyway. She may eventually...
Conversation
03.15.13
Is the One Child Policy Finished—And Was It a Failure?
Dorinda Elliott:China’s recent decision to phase out the agency that oversees the one-child policy has raised questions about whether the policy itself will be dropped—and whether it was a success or a failure.Aside from the...
Reports
03.01.13
Population, Policy, and Politics
Population Council
One of the main puzzles of modern population and social history is why, among all countries confronting rapid population growth in the second half of the twentieth century, China chose to adopt an extreme measure of birth control known as the one-...
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07.22.12Reports of Forced Abortions Fuel Push to End Chinese Law
New York Times
Recent reports of women being coerced into late-term abortions by local officials have thrust China’s population control policy into the spotlight and ignited an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are seeking to...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.05.12China Needs To Ease One-Child Policy, State Researchers Say
Bloomberg
Chinese government researchers called on the nation to ease its one-child policy as soon as possible to cope with an aging population and labor shortage. One option is allowing all people to have a second child, three researchers including Yu Dong...
Caixin Media
05.18.12
Demography and Destiny
China is facing a demographic reckoning that is approaching a nightmare.For thirty years, the government has been obsessed with keeping population growth down, often resorting to late-term abortions and other brutal measures. The panic now is that...
The NYRB China Archive
05.12.11
Quality of Life: India vs. China
from New York Review of Books
The steadily rising rate of economic growth in India has recently been around 8 percent per year (it is expected to be 9 percent this year), and there is much speculation about whether and when India may catch up with and surpass China’s over 10...