The Negative Effects Of Population Growth In China

Population growth can be a sign of prosperity but also an omen for disasters yet to come. The People’s Republic of China faced increased population growth in the early 1960’s after the “Great Famine”. In the late 1970’s China quickly took action and implemented a policy that was based on the Malthusian principle of preventative checks. Under Mao’s rule, the “One-Child Policy” was implemented and over time it was strictly enforced. The one-child policy successfully slowed down population growth, but in order to accomplish this feat sex ratios were skewed more than before, age structure was disrupted, labor force dwindled, marriage became extremely competitive, some positive and negative changes in China’s development.

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China’s one-child policy completed its objective of lowering population growth, but this decrease would result in serious changes in the age structure of the country. Fewer children are being born each year due to the one-child policy and this eventually disrupted the age pyramid’s shape. In 1994, S. Irudaya Rajan took interest in China’s One-Child policy and the shift in age structure as a result of the one-child policy. According to Rajan’s research (1994), fertility was declining but this will lead to “population aging”. (p. 2505). Population aging is a concept that would describe the result of China’s one-child policy; fewer children were being born, and as a result there will be a larger population of elderly citizen than there are children being born. This is problematic because eventually there will be more elderly citizen than there will be citizens capable of working. Rajan points out that in the province of Shanghai, the highest proportion of aged population can be found. Looking at the Chinese census of 1990 Rajan found that the proportion of children under the age of 14 is lower than that of children in India. This further proves that China’s one-child policy was effective in lowering population growth, but there are negative externalities such as labor force

In terms of development, the one-child policy caused damage in the sense that gender inequality remained. According to Vanessa Fong (2002), the one-child policy did not empower women but instead promoted modernization by attempting to decrease the population. Fong also argues that the one-child policy was not put into effect to release women from the burden of high fertility, but rather it was just an externality in the grand scheme of the one-child policy (p. 1100). Fong stated that women in China had to put off their career due to medical problems and maternity leave as a result of frequent childbirths, but the one-child policy slowly decreased fertility (p. 1101). Due to this change in fertility women were able to join the workforce or take care of the elderly, but gender inequality still remained. Lawrence Hong’s research (1987) found that gender inequality in China was still noticeable as women were underrepresented in high-ranking positions. Digging deeper into the effects and outcome of the one-child policy, female infanticides and female fetus abortions can be seen as further acts that promote gender inequality. Hong concluded that reports on female infanticides were alarming but that it is was common and that women in China cannot attain gender equality unless they make sacrifices (p. 324). Hong’s statement may seem controversial but the point he