This evil Toronto Star coverage of China’s one-child policy is stunning. The callous cruelty of such carefree reporting on this tragedy is abominable. Those Chinese given permission to have two children may well be happier than when they were only permitted one child, but to report at face value that they are happy, period, is the kind of euphemstic spin you’d expect from a self-serving totalitarian regime. The writer also says that “equally important” as making the Chinese guinea pigs happy was the fact that the two-child policy did not require as much heavy-handed enforcement. The reduced need for brutal enforcement is indeed a good outcome, but to call it equally important with the growth in freedom of the people reflects a goulish, state-ist mentality. Especially when he goes on to discuss the lighter enforcement requirements from the perspective of the government officials rather than the recipients of the beatings and other cruelty. We are shocked that such sentiments would appear in print in Canada in anything other than a scandalous, underground rag. But they appeared in the Toronto Star, in an article by Bill Schiller.

Read the complete article here.

The Toronto Star – April 24, 2010
CHINA’S HAPPY TWO-CHILD EXPERIMENT
After 25 years, Yicheng County has become Exhibit A in a growing case for reform
By Bill Schiller

DONG FUTU VILLAGE, CHINA – It was a spring day, as Feng Caishan recalls. Here, in this farming community on China’s Loess Plateau – a jagged, golden landscape of shifting sands tucked into an elbow of the Yellow River – 70 or 80 officials assembled in a local meeting hall. They’d been summoned to a lecture, which seemed routine enough. But what Professor Liang Zhongtang told them that day, 25 years ago, astonished them: Every rural household in Yicheng County, he said, would now be allowed to have two children. “I couldn’t believe my ears,” says Feng, then a local Communist Party official and now retired. Neither could anyone else.

Everyone knew that China’s parents were allowed only one child. The government policy, started in 1979, was strictly enforced to curb overpopulation. Those who violated the policy were ordered to have abortions and faced heavy fines. It was the law. Now, suddenly – here in Yicheng at least – that policy was about to change. “At first, I was afraid,” says Feng, now 65. “I thought if people had two children, they’d want three. Then everything would spin out of control.” But Professor Liang explained to the gathering that the new, two-child policy for Yicheng was an experiment approved by the central government. As a social scientist, he wanted to see how people would respond if they had the freedom to choose – what would the overall impact on the population be? The officials sat in rapt silence.

There were a few rules, however, Liang went on: Under the plan, people would be required to marry later – men at 25 instead of 22; women at 23 instead of 20 – have their first child a year later, and, after an interval of five or six years, they’d be allowed a second child. Liang, then teaching at the Communist Party School of Shanxi province, had designed the plan himself. He’d written directly to then Communist Party Secretary Hu Yaobang to win permission. One other detail: There was to be no reporting of the experiment in the media. The government wanted the plan kept as quiet as possible. Later, when local people in Yicheng learned of the plan in a door-to-door canvass, they were ecstatic. People applauded, officials recall.

In no time at all, the experiment was a resounding success: abortions plummeted, fines for violators declined, and Yicheng’s population growth actually fell beneath the national average. While across China parents were resisting the one-child national policy by having two, three or more children, here in Yicheng, some parents happily had two, others happily chose one. But almost no one exceeded the limit. Equally important: Local officials no longer had to use a heavy hand to enforce a policy no one liked. “It made our jobs easier,” says Feng, who went on to become the county’s family planning commissioner. “The people were so happy we ended up calling the experiment the ‘Loving the People policy,’ because that’s the way people felt about it.”

Yicheng’s experiment has never ended. Here in this rural county about 1,000 kilometres south of Beijing, it continues to this day.

But so does China’s one-child policy. There are exceptions: In cities, for example, if one parent is from a minority group, or if both parents are themselves single children, a second child might be allowed. In rural areas, a second child might be permitted, but only if the first child is a girl. After that, parents must stop. In this small piece of China, however, a second child is allowed without any restrictions or qualifications.

Read the complete article here.