1.6 China

Question 1

What caused the crisis in China?

Answer 1

• 1949 Mao Zedong founded People’s Republic of China, beginning the Great Leap Forward
• Population growth was rapid - TFR was 6.5 and healthcare was improving due to development
• Land was taken from farmers and owned by state, distributing food equally. Organised steel and foo production into mass collectives
• The GLF was extremely inefficient and nearly 30m people died
• Population was at 1.3bn which had doubled since Mao, increasing at 7%
• It evidenced that population growth exceeded resource capacity and so policy was needed to fix it.

Question 2

Why did China struggle with population growth?

Answer 2

Struggles:

• 7% of arable land yet 0.078ha per person
• Lack of freshwater and resources
• Hilly land and mismatch between supply and demand
• By 2020 expected 60$ of resources exploited
• Population doubled and supply could not meet demand due to lack of water, arable land and resources
• 1/4 of national income used to cope with population growth - opportunity cost.
• Resources exploited and likely to be fully stressed by 2025

Question 3

What policies were put in place to control population?

Answer 3

• New chairman aimed to reduce the TFR to slow population growth, half the population in 100 years and reduce ratio between male and female.
• Policy was first introduced to encourage people to have fewer children, reducing TFR from 5.7 to 2.9 however resources were still being exploited and so could not cope - needed OCP in 1979.

One child policy:

• Benefits like longer maternity leave, better housing, free healthcare and free education if have one child
• Second child benefits would be stopped and have to pay for all the benefits they got before - monitored using a ‘red card’ scheme
• Could not marry before certain age or without planning education, a test and employers permission.
• Family planning officers would persuade and enforce abortion and sterilisation as well as give out free contraception
• After that you’d have to apply to be able to have a baby and get the red slip
• Granny police employed to spy on couples and often snitches in factories
• Penalties may be in form of cash up to 10k yuan, livestock, removal of benefits. Fines can be sometimes 4x their income

Question 4

Why was not nationally applicable?

Answer 4

• Rural areas was unpopular and ignored as children were seen as assets
• Also difficult to enforce so many unregistered births
• Baby girls killed or abandoned to try for a boy, increasing the ratio
• If husband and wife are only children they may be allowed to have two children. Can also have enough if their first child is disabled or died and in some rural areas if first was a girl they could have another

Question 5

What were the successes of the One Child Policy?

Answer 5

• First policy dropped TFR from 5.7 to 2.9 by 1979
• TFR dropped from 2.9 to 1.8 in 2009,
• Prevented 400m births
• Fewer resources used
• Living standards higher
• Less pressure on employment, education and healthcare
• Quality of life better

Question 6

What were the failures of the One Child Policy?

Answer 6

• Inequalities made between rural and urban areas so birth rates still high and population still large in rural areas
• Food security became an issue as arable land was lost to urban expansion and water diminishing due to falling water table
• Agriculture uses 87% of China’s water - water shortages in cities
• Unemployment still key issue - un urban areas unemployment is up to 8-15% and in Shanghai it is 43%
• Mechanisation caused 100-140m surplus workers, causing pressure on jobs and more rural-urban migration, furthering pressure
• Population now ageing - 5% over 65 in 1989 and estimated to be 30% but 2025
• Estimated 200m migrants in Chinese cities
• Fines corrupted and imposed on poor children, causing loss of benefits and pay cuts to already poor people and money going to the elites, increasing inequality
• Moral issues of sterilisation and abortions - moral failure and black market for surrogate babies
• Death and abandonment rate of baby girls caused distorted sex ratio, from 100:103 to 116:100.
• Spoilt children with too much attention
• Rise in homosexuality - laws and discrimination against it and gay men married to straight women

Question 7

What may be some issues in the future?

Answer 7

Improved healthcare means death rate is low, causingageing population

• Single children spoilt
• 30m more men than women and so unable to find wives which leads to loneliness

Question 8

What are successes in Shanghai?

Answer 8

• TFR is 0.8
• Population decreasing
• Good as has surplus labour but in the long term may create shortages and undermine economic growth
• Well educated couples allowed more than one child