Imagine growing up in Beijing, China. The year is 1990. You are an only child. And you only know other only children. You are much adored (especially if you are
a boy). But you shoulder heavy burdens: Your parents
and grandparents have pinned their hopes and dreams on you to succeed in school. Find a high-paying job. Get married. Carry on the family name. Support them in their old age. This is reality for you, your relatives, your
classmates, and your friends. This became reality for children all around
China after the Communist Party implemented the One Child Policy. The pressure is immense. And the burden on society is unprecedented. Let’s step back to understand where this
began… The year was 1966 and Mao Zedong and his Communist
Party were starting to worry. The country had recovered from famine, but
the population growth rate was soaring. It looked like China might again lose the
race between mouths and food. The government started gingerly with a birth
control propaganda campaign. Next came efforts to control “early marriage,”
with marriage bureaus instructed to deny licenses to those deemed too young – in other words,
young enough to produce several children. In 1976, Mao died… And his successors were all too aware that
he had bequeathed them a disaster in the making. China’s population was still growing too
fast for Beijing’s liking, and the economy was stagnating. Famine was still fresh in recent memory, and
the question of how to feed extra mouths was pressing. By 1978, a worried Chinese government encouraged
families to have no more than two children. And from 1980 through 2015, China implemented
what is known today as “The One-Child Policy.” Its effects were swift. By 2000, 24% of China's population under 19
had no living siblings. That's 106 million people. But why do we need studies to tell us this? That fact of the matter is that a simple population
count isn’t going to tell us who’s related to whom. In order to extrapolate that information,
we need special computer simulations that can map out family networks. These simulations predict that by the year
2050, more than one third of Chinese citizens will have no sisters and no brothers. That’s 440 million people. China’s population is still growing, but
all too soon it’ll begin to shrink. Many sister-less and brother-less men and
women will only have parents, grandparents, and children. No uncles. No aunts, and no cousins. These are the unintended consequences China’s
plan to reduce the birth rate and bring the total population to an ideal, “sustainable”
level. But all those statistics are nothing more
than numbers. What’s missing is… family. Family is particularly important in the People’s
Republic because there’s very little public assistance… family serves as the main social
safety net, especially for rural residents. It’s also a low trust-society – which
is partly a legacy of the Cultural Revolution, and the overwhelming surveillance state it
created: Neighbors ratted out neighbors for “bourgeois
thoughts”; leaders betrayed rivals for “Western”
or “capitalist tendencies”. In short, in China, people trust blood. They trust family. China has a long cultural tradition that emphasizes
what’s called filial piety… essentially the virtue of honoring and serving one’s
parents and ancestors. With this in mind, you can start to see how
440 million sibling-less individuals pose a serious problem to China’s economy. Not only will small family businesses that
rely on kinship networks find it harder to operate with shrinking family sizes, but the
overall workforce population will begin to decrease. And since young adults area major driver of
entrepreneurship and innovation, the Chinese economy could become less innovative as the
population ages. To make matters worse for the young workforce,
care for older generations puts an incredible strain on their finances. Consider an only child begotten by only children: He wouldn’t have any siblings, no aunts
nor uncles – only direct, linear ancestors. A 4-2-1 family type emerges after just two
generations. An 8-4-2-1 family type after three. Think of it like an upside-down pyramid, in
which more and more weighs on that single point at the bottom. We’re seeing this all over China. But it’s not just a Chinese phenomenon;
single children everywhere have no one to share the burden of aging parents: their bills;
their health; their housing; their needs. These are your parents… but what about your
life? If this is a serious problem in cities, imagine
the impact in the countryside. Rural older Chinese rely on intra-family transfer
– money from their relatives -- as the main source of income. They are the most vulnerable to diminishing
kinship networks. For those living in an urban area in 2010,
66% of people over the age of 60 reported their pension as their main source of income,
while 22% relied on transfer payments. In rural areas, that number goes up to 47%. With less than 5% reporting their pension
as their main source of income. These, and other pressures facing many young,
working, only-children are not promising – and will likely contribute to a series of struggles
in the decades to come. But that is far from the worst of it. You see it all around you in America, if you
care to notice. Until recently, almost no one adopted Chinese
boys. Because only girls were rejected. Girls can’t work the farm. They’re not top earners. They won’t carry on the family name. In a patriarchal society, boys matter. Girls don’t. The result in China was adoption; abortion;
at the worst, murder. But set aside the morality. It means that now, there aren’t enough girls. Girls who grow to be women to marry. Women to have kids. Women to balance society. Almost one quarter of Chinese men between
the ages of 50 and 59, are projected to not have a living spouse in 2050. And for men ages 30 to 39, almost half would
have no wife. That’s nearly 15 million and 40 million
men, respectively. What does having huge over-hangs of never
married men mean to a society? Large numbers of unmarriageable men might
contribute to higher levels of criminality and depression, which can become a liability
for local communities. And this issue isn’t just a problem for
men... Individuals and families in general will likely
experience emotional isolation due to the shrinking kinship networks and the out-migration
of young people. And these problems aren’t only localized
to communities. They affect the future security of the entire
country. A society with only “only” children is
not a society enthusiastic about military conflict. The Chinese military may be more cautious
about initiating war with cadres of spoiled only children; the “little emperors” that
now make up much of China’s youth. Imagine losing your only baby, your only hope
for sustenance in old age to military adventures. The People’s Liberation Army may well have
trouble recruiting and retaining highly skilled personnel. On top of this, millions of workers have migrated
from rural areas to coastal economic centers, creating a new family problem—scores of
“left behind” children. Unlike almost anywhere on earth, internal
movement in China is regulated by visa and permit. If you want a job in the city… you are probably
moving there illegally. China’s National Bureau of Statistics estimates
that there were almost 290 million rural migrant workers in 2018. So, for those only children in China... their
struggles… their hardships… their years of isolation… many hoped such sacrifices
would be justified in service of a higher, national purpose. Was the One Child Policy all for naught? Today, the Communist Party is aware of the
long demographic shadow cast by its One-Child Policy, but efforts to rethink it are coming
too late. With a slowing economy, a shrinking labor
force, an atrophying family structure, and a potentially reluctant military, China’s
grand experiment in population control has been rife with unexpected consequences. The one-child policy was a brutal attempt
to forge prosperity… Instead it has wrought a human tragedy on
a scale never before seen.
