Critics of the policy maintain it has led in some case to the killing of female infants because of the traditional preference for boys.
The number of men is thought to outnumber women in China by more than 60 million. But it is common to find couples in the countryside, where 80% of the population live, with a large number of children.
Despite forced abortions and severe financial penalties, many couples still get around the law by sending the pregnant woman to stay with relatives until the baby is born or claiming the newborn baby was adopted or belongs to a friend or relative.
Backed by the punitive sanctions, the 'one child' policy has generally worked in the cities.
Infanticide is not common in China as the killing of one's child is against Chinese culture and religion. However, there are some evidence and accounts of parents killing their female infants in remote and rural areas due to various reasons, including: the family is not able to support all their children; the parents do not want to be looked down on or laughed at by the community (a woman who did not give birth to a boy may be considered "not good at" birth); the wife wants to prevent the husband from marrying another woman/concubine in the excuse of her inability of giving birth to (enough) sons. In addition, there is no scientific research showing a direct link between infanticide and the one-child policy. The root causes of infanticide, especially for baby girls, are more likely to be poverty in rural China along with the traditional preference for boys since they are expected to work on the farms to help support the family.
When the one-child policy was introduced, the government set a target population of 1.2 billion by the year 2000. The census of 2000 put the population at 1.27 billion, although some demographers regard this number as an underestimate. The collection of population statistics in China is known to be subject to manipulation to conform with family-planning regulations, since the process is overseen by officials who are often unwilling to uncover any violations of the rules. Chinese authorities claim that the policy has prevented 250 to 300 million births. The total fertility rate, which is defined as the mean number of children born per woman, decreased from 2.9 in 1979 to 1.7 in 2004, with a rate of 1.3 in urban areas and just under 2.0 in rural areas. This trend has created a distinct demographic pattern of urban families with predominantly one child and rural families with predominantly two children.
