One Child: The Story Of China's Most Radical Experiment
by Mei Fong /
2016 / English / PDF
197.8 MB Download
When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980,
they hoped curbing birth-rates would help lift China's poorest and
increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as
China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades,
it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly
diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years
documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese
society. In One Child, she explores its true human impact,
traveling across China to meet the people who live with its
consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality:
unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only-children
supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages
teeming with ineligible bachelors, and an ungoverned adoption
market stretching across the globe. Fong tackles questions that
have major implications for China's future: whether its "Little
Emperor" cohort will make for an entitled or risk-averse
generation; how China will manage to support itself when one in
every four people is over sixty-five years old; and above all, how
much the one-child policy may end up hindering China's growth.
When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980,
they hoped curbing birth-rates would help lift China's poorest and
increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as
China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades,
it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly
diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years
documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese
society. In One Child, she explores its true human impact,
traveling across China to meet the people who live with its
consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality:
unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only-children
supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages
teeming with ineligible bachelors, and an ungoverned adoption
market stretching across the globe. Fong tackles questions that
have major implications for China's future: whether its "Little
Emperor" cohort will make for an entitled or risk-averse
generation; how China will manage to support itself when one in
every four people is over sixty-five years old; and above all, how
much the one-child policy may end up hindering China's growth.