A new documentary has revealed the horrifying ordeal millions of Chinese mothers had to endure for decades because of the country’s now-defunct one-child policy.
Ordinary families have made frank confessions of how the controversial family-planning law affected their lives in the soul-searching production, called One Child Nation.
Most of them confessed that they had no choice but to follow the law set out by the country’s Communist Party in the 1970s.
Two Chinese filmmakers have embarked on a soul-searching journey to reveal the country’s deep scar left by the controversial one-child policy in a new film called One Child Nation
The 85-minute production is the brainchild of two filmmakers Wang Nanfu (right) and Zhang Jialing (left). The pair are pictured at the film’s premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival
Between 1978 and 2015, most Chinese couples living in urban regions were only allowed to have one child.
The mothers would have to face forced abortions if they fell pregnant with a second child by accident or on purpose.
The law was abolished on January 1, 2016 and couples are now allowed to have up to two children.
The brainchild of two Chinese filmmakers Wang Nanfu and Zhang Jialing, the 85-minute film, to be released by Amazon on August 9, won this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner for unmasking ‘the tightly held secrets of China’s one-child policy’.
The Sundance Film Festival lauded the film for its ‘dizzying number of revelations from journalists, officials, parents, and activists about the widespread enforcement of sterilisation, child abandonment, and state-sponsored kidnappings’.
‘I never thought about what the policy meant for me or anyone until I learned that I was going to be a mum,’ said the film’s co-director Ms Wang who was born in China in 1985, seven years after the one-child policy was launched.
Apart from forced abortions and sterilisations, results of the four-decade-long policy also included the abandonment of babies, especially girls, the film has revealed. The above picture shows classifieds from a newspaper which shows the girls being found deserted in Gaozhou
Most of the Chinese people interviewed by the filmmakers confessed that they had no choice but to follow the one-child policy set out by the country’s Communist Party in the 1970s
Ordinary families have made frank confessions of how the controversial family-planning law affected their lives and, in some cases, left them traumatised in the award-winning production
‘Throughout my life I was taught to believe that love of my country was equal to love of the government and the [Communist] party,’ said Ms Wang who now lives in the United State and is a mother of one.
She added none of her family had ever questioned about the policy and that she was ‘so angry even toward my own family’ after she learned about the truth behind the nationwide birth-control regime.
Apart from the abortions, abandonment of newborn babies – especially girls – was a major result of the state policy.
Zhang Jialing (left) and Wang Nanfu speak at the ‘One Child Nation’ Premiere during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film won this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner
One of Ms Wang’s interviewees, a man, admitted if he had been born a girl, ‘I would have been put into a basket and sent away’.
A mandatory one-child rule was launched in late 1970s by Beijing when China’s population was fast increasing – due to a post-war baby boom encouraged by Chairman Mao.
It was said the one-child policy was aimed at keeping the Chinese population under 1.2 billion at the end of the 20th century.
A young Chinese mother watches her child in front of a sign reading ‘birth control is a basic state policy of our country’ in Beijing on July 23, 2002. The law was abolished on January 1, 2016 and couples across the country are now allowed to have up to two children
The ruthless policy was strictly enforced in urban areas. If a woman was pregnant with her second child, she would be asked to abort it.
If the couple decided to keep it, a fine would be applied – usually three times the family’s annual income.
Selective demographics in the country, such as rural residents and minority groups, however, were not bound by the policy.
It’s hard to find out how many foetuses were aborted over the years across China.
But a 2014 research by Chinese population expert Wang Cuntong showed that China had the highest abortion rate in the world in the 1980s, the decade after the enforcement of the one-child rule.
Around 14.37 million pregnancies were terminated in China in 1983, according to Professor Wang’s report.
The survey also claimed that in 1983, 56 out of 1,000 pregnant women had to undergo abortions.
China officially started its so-called ‘universal two-child policy’ on January 1, 2016, due to a quickly ageing population.
Chinese family-planning authorities predict that an extra three million babies would be born annually between 2016 and 2021 due to the shift of the policy.
Why did China once have a one-child policy?
For nearly 40 years, each Chinese couple was only allowed to have one baby due to the country’s strict one-child policy (file photo)
In the 1950s after the Communist Party of China took over the country, Mao Zedong, the first Chairman of People’s Republic of China, believed in the phrase ‘there is strength in numbers’.
The powerful leader encouraged post-war Chinese women to give birth to more children. He awarded those who have more than five offspring the shining title of a ‘glorious mother’.
As a result, between 1950 and 1960, approximately 200 million people were born in China, more than a third of the nation’s population in its founding year 1949 (542 million).
In order to control the quickly expanding population, the State Council of China unveiled a revolutionary family-planning guideline in 1973, encouraging couples to have a maximum of two children, with a four-year gap between the pair.
A decade later, a mandatory one-child policy was launched with the aim of keeping the Chinese population under 1.2 billion at the end of the 20th century.
The ruthless policy was strictly enforced in urban areas.
If a woman was pregnant with her second child, she would be asked to abort it.
If the couple decided to keep it, a fine would be applied – usually three times the family’s annual income.
Selective demographics in the country, such as rural residents and minority groups, however, were not bound by the policy.
On January 1, 2014, the Chinese authorities launched a so-called ‘selective two-child policy’, which allowed couples to have a second baby as long as either of them is a single child.
China officially started its so-called ‘universal two-child policy’ on January 1, 2016.
Chinese family-planning authorities predict that an extra three million babies would be born annually between 2016 and 2021 due to the shift of the policy.