History

In the 1950s, Mao Tse-Tung urged his people to have lots of children to strengthen the country. The population growth led the government in the 1970s to be worried that China would be unable to feed their citizens. So the Chinese government implemented the One Child Policy in 1979. The goal of this policy was to keep China’s population below 1.3 billion by the year 2000. Today, China is home to over 1.2 billion people.

The “one child” policy is not a law, as most people think it is, “a policy enforced by the system of punishments”. Though there is a Marriage Law since 1980, insisting the practice of family planning, there is not one in the amount of children one family can have. The Marriage Law encourages late marriages, late childbirths, one child per couple, and it helps space the time between children being born. Having one child is really encouraged, more in the urban areas than in the countryside. Women who are pregnant who have been authorized by the government, get birth coupons entitling them to have a child. There are also punishments that go to the whole town, not just a individual, for not having a pregnancy authorized, which include fines, forfeiture of government benefits, demotion and discharge from work.