“China’s One-Child Policy: Crimes Against Women and Unborn Babies”
China’s one-child policy, in place since 1979, is state-sponsored cruelty and constitutes a massive crime against humanity. The Nazi war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg correctly interpreted forced abortion as a crime against humanity – nothing in human history compares to the magnitude of China’s 33-year assault on women and children.
Abortion is a weapon of mass destruction. Hundreds of millions of people have been wiped out.
Today in China, pregnant women who do not have permission to give birth are hunted down and forcibly aborted rather than given maternal care. They are mocked, belittled and humiliated.
In recent days, the exploitation and forced abortion at seven months of Feng Jianmei has hit the headlines (Reggie Littlejohn actually broke this tragic story), and while Feng remains in a hospital – she calls it a prison – her husband Deng has been beaten. But Feng’s gross mistreatment is commonplace. I’m planning a Congressional hearing on Feng.
There are no single mothers in China – except those who somehow evade the family planning cadres and hide their pregnancies. For more than three decades, brothers and sisters have been illegal; a mother has absolutely no right to protect her unborn child from state-sponsored violence.
The price of not complying with the one child per couple policy is staggering. A Chinese woman who becomes pregnant without permission will be put under psychotic pressure to have an abortion. She knows that ‘out-of-plan’ illegal children are denied education, health care and marriage, and that fines for having a child without a birth permit can be ten times the average annual income of two parents, and that those families who can’t or won’t pay will be jailed, have their homes demolished, or have their young child killed. If the brave woman still refuses to submit, she may be held in a punishment cell or, if she escapes, her relatives may be detained and often beaten. Group punishments are used to socially ostracise her – her colleagues and neighbours are denied permission to give birth. If, by some miracle, the woman is able to resist this pressure, she may be physically dragged to the operating table and forced to have an abortion.
The trauma experienced by this woman is difficult to comprehend. It is a trauma that is shared by many women in China, whose experiences of intimacy and motherhood are influenced by the prevailing atmosphere of fear. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there are 500 female suicides per day in China. China is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate is higher than the male. According to the Beijing Psychological Crisis Study and Prevention Center, the suicide rate for females in China is three times higher than for males.
The consequence of this policy is a dystopian “brave new world” with no precedent in human history, where women are psychologically wounded, girls fall victim to sex-selective abortion (in some provinces 140 boys are born for every 100 girls), and most children grow up without brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles or cousins.
Over the years, I have chaired 37 congressional human rights hearings that have focused, in whole or in part, on China’s one child policy. At one hearing, the principal witness, Wuijan, a Chinese student attending a US university, testified about how her child was forcibly murdered by the government. She stated, “The room was full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some moms were crying. Some moms were mourning. Some moms were screaming.” Furthermore, Wuijan stated that she was next in line to give testimony. Through her tears, she described what she called her “journey in hell.”
At another hearing, a woman who ran the forced abortion program in Fujian said that by day she was a monster, by night a wife and mother of one. The male preference in Chinese society and the limitation of the family size to one child have directly contributed to what is accurately described as gendercide – the deliberate extermination of a girl, born or unborn, simply because she happens to be a girl. As a result of the Chinese government’s barbaric attack on mothers and their children, there are some 100 million missing daughters in China today. It has been observed that the three most dangerous words in China today are “it’s a girl!”.
The absence of these girls has resulted in China becoming the global hub for human sex trafficking. Women and young girls from outside the country are being sold as commodities throughout China, a direct consequence of the one-child policy.
I am the author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, a comprehensive piece of legislation designed to prevent trafficking, prosecute traffickers and protect victims.
One of the key provisions of the legislation is the requirement for an annual assessment of each country. The TIP Report, released last week on 19 June, indicates that:
The combination of China’s birth limitation policy and a cultural preference for sons has resulted in a skewed sex ratio in China, which has served as a key cause of trafficking of foreign women as brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution.
The government did not take any discernible steps to address the role that its birth limitation policy plays in fueling human trafficking in China. This is evidenced by the fact that there is a shortage of female marriage partners due to the gender disparities that result from the policy. The government did not take any steps to alter the policy, and according to the Chinese government, the number of foreign female trafficking victims in China increased significantly during the reporting period. The Director of the Ministry of Public Security’s Anti-Trafficking Task Force stated in the reporting period that the number of foreign women trafficked to China is definitely rising. He attributed this to two main factors: the demand from buyers and traditional preferences for boys in Chinese families.
Two days ago, an op-ed in the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, shed light on the emerging demographic catastrophe that is China.
The article, entitled “Leftover Men to be a Big Problem,” acknowledges the existence of a “bachelors’ crisis” that may give rise to a “moral crisis of marriage and family” and that the “continual accumulation of the number of unmarried men will greatly increase the risk of social instability.”
At a congressional hearing I chaired last September, BYU Professor Valerie Hudson, author of Bare Branches: In her testimony, Valerie Hudson, author of Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, posited that by 2020, the number of young adult bare branches—defined as individuals between the ages of 15 and 34—will reach approximately 23 to 25 million. She further asserted that this demographic shift will have profound societal repercussions, including an increase in societal instability, a rise in crime, and the formation of gangs.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a world-renowned demographer, poses the question: “What are the consequences for a society that has chosen to become simultaneously more grey and more male?”
In her assessment of the potential for conflict and instability, Professor Hudson stated that, faced with worsening domestic instability and an unsolvable economic decline due to China’s aging population, the Chinese government may be tempted to use foreign policy to “ride the tiger” of domestic instability. The twin themes of anti-Japanese sentiment and the unfulfilled goal of reunification with Taiwan will resonate deeply with a significant proportion of the Chinese population. Over the next two or three decades, it is likely that we will observe the security ramifications of the masculinisation of China’s growing young adult population, particularly when considered in conjunction with an understanding of the consequences of global ageing.
In August of last year, Vice President Joe Biden visited China and informed the audience that he was aware of and understood the one-child policy. He also stated that he was not questioning the decision of the State to implement it. One might inquire as to the public reaction were the Vice President to espouse a similar understanding of and non-second-guessing of copyright infringement and gross violations of intellectual property rights.
One is compelled to inquire whether the Honorable Mr. Biden is in fact jesting.
The one-child policy is arguably the most egregious and vicious attack on women in history. For the Vice President of the United States to publicly state that he fully understands the one child policy and then say he won’t second guess it is unconscionable and represents a betrayal of every mother in the People’s Republic of China.
Although Vice President Biden attempted to modestly backtrack on his extraordinarily callous comment about the policy, his voting record as a Senator reveals a long-held disregard for the severity of this human rights violation. On 13 September 2000, he joined 52 other senators in defeating an amendment by then-Senator Jessie Helms condemning the one-child policy. It has been reported that then-Senator Biden took this stance because he was concerned that condemning China on fundamental human rights would interfere with the normalization of trade relations.
Furthermore, I inquired of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a hearing whether she or President Obama had raised the issue of forced abortion in China directly in a face-to-face manner with President Hu when he was in Washington. She declined to respond at the time, stating that she would provide an update at a later date. To date, I have not received a response.
In addition to its apparent indifference to the atrocities committed under the one-child policy, the Obama administration is also providing financial support to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is contrary to U.S. law. Twenty-eight years ago, on 9 May 1984, I introduced the first amendment to a foreign aid bill to prohibit funding for organisations such as the UNFPA that were complicit in China’s forced abortion and involuntary sterilisation policy. The amendment was subsequently enacted. It is remarkable that, despite the passage of time, policymakers, including the Obama Administration, have demonstrated a striking lack of concern or, in some cases, even support for these egregious violations of women’s and children’s rights. The Obama Administration has demonstrated a lack of accountability and transparency regarding this issue by maintaining a policy of silence and financial support to the tune of $50 million per year to the UNFPA, an organisation that provides support, planning, implementation, defence and whitewashing of the Chinese government’s brutal programme.
During one of several visits to Beijing, I proposed to Peng Peiyun, the director of China’s population control programme at the time, that coercion should be ended. Madame Peng informed me that the UNFPA was highly supportive of the one-child per couple policy and that the UNFPA unequivocally agreed with her assertion that the policy is entirely voluntary and that coercion is not employed. In other words, the assertion that coercion does not exist is simply a fabrication.
For over three decades, the UNFPA has consistently lauded China’s population control programme and repeatedly encouraged other countries to adopt similar policies.
A few years ago, the UNFPA and the Chinese government extended a warm welcome to high-level diplomats from Africa, including health ministers, to promote policies that limit the number of children. Despite the fact that China’s enforcement mechanism relies on heavy coercion and its aging population will soon implode its economy, many African leaders appear to have been persuaded by the offer. The possibility of limitations on the number of children a mother may carry to term is currently under active consideration throughout the subcontinent.
Furthermore, the UNFPA has attempted to introduce China-like child limitation policies in other countries, including the Philippines.
Finally, in 2000, I drafted legislation—The Admiral James W. Nance and Meg Donovan Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 2000 and 2001.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
