China’s One Child Policy Violates Human Rights

Although there are many facets of human rights being abused and violated every day, the Chinese would mention their fight for reproductive rights as one of the first and foremost in their mind. In 1979, the Chinese government passed the One-Child Policy in an attempt to control the growth of their population. While this may have been a grand idea in theory, in reality this policy violates the human right to form a family. By limiting the amount of children a Chinese couple is allowed to produce, this policy is effectively forcing abortion, sterilization and is taking away the Chinese family’s right to make their own choices.

The policy was created in 1979 and set a strong limit of one child per family. However, modern-day China is currently working off of a change proposed in 1984, which changed the policy to work off of a 1.5-child per couple. This change allowed some families to have another child, but only if their first born was a female. Most provinces have also allowed rural couples to have another child a few years after the birth of their first. This relaxed policy also permitted minority couples to have two or more children in an effort to increase diversity. Unfortunately, most of these amendments to the policies affect only the rural citizens of China, and provide little benefit to the urban residents.

This being said, there is an issue of fairness when it comes to the rural vs. urban families. In Jiali Li and Rosemary Santana Cooney’s article, “Son Preference and the One-Child Policy in China 1979-1988,” we learn of the different types of familial registration, and how that impacts the policy. The two types of registration depend on the location of your residency. Chinese families with Type I registrat...

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