One child Policy

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China’s One-child policy

1/ Why did China decide to adopt a one-child policy?

The Chinese government decided to adopt this policy in 1979 to help limit its country’s population growth (55 million every year), by encouraging fewer children and delayed marriages. The one-child policy was introduced to ensure that China, which has historically been prone to floods and famine, could feed its entire people.

2/How did the policy work?

In order to alleviate the population problem, China had to reduce China’s family size from 5 children to 1.5 children per family, but just to make sure it was a uniform number it was reduced 1.0 child per family. The 'one child' policy stipulates each couple living in the cities should only have one child, unless one or both of the couple are from an ethnic minority or they are both only children. In addition to this, women must be 24 or older to have a baby, and in order to do that they must be married (for which they need permission to do), have a birth permission card and pass a test on contraception.

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In industrial settings, people worked for the government and many of these checks were carried out there, most women will sign a “contract” stating that they will not have another child and when a company has all their employers “signed up”, their workers would receive a bonus.

In the early stages of this policy, there were some forced abortions and sterilisation carried out by the government to those who did not conform to the policy and fined heavily of up to 10 times their annual earnings. But for those who did, they could indulge in the benefits of having only ...

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