

China to Ease One-Child Policy; Will Also Abolish Re-Education Through Labor - chaz
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303289904579199431427590394

======
rayiner
I didn't even know they still had these things. I figured they went away in
the 1980's or 1990's.

Do the Chinese still perform full-term abortions to maintain the one-child
policy?
[http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/NEWEVID.TXT](http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/NEWEVID.TXT)
("[M]others arriving in labour at the hospital are asked for their child-
bearing licences. Babies being delivered without a licence are given 'the
poison shot.' A hypodermic syringe filled with iodine or formaldehyde is
injected through a 5cm needle directly into the soft part of the baby's head
as it crowns. The baby can take up to 48 hours to die.").

Apparently it still happens:
[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/06/chinas-
barbaric...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/06/chinas-barbaric-one-
child-policy) ("In 2007, I read of riots breaking out in Bobai County in
China's south-western Guangxi province. Under pressure from higher authorities
to meet birth targets, local officials had launched a vicious crackdown on
family-planning violators. Squads had rounded up 17,000 women and subjected
them to sterilisations and abortions and had extracted 7.8m yuan (£800,000) in
fines for 'illegal births,' ransacking the homes of families who refused to
pay.").

See also: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opinion/chinas-brutal-
one-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opinion/chinas-brutal-one-child-
policy.html?_r=0) ("According to Chinese Health Ministry data released in
March, 336 million abortions and 222 million sterilizations have been carried
out since 1971.").

I suppose it is a testament to how much the business types at places like WSJ
whitewash the fact that China is still the world's largest dictatorship, and
quite a brutal one at that. All in the interest of making a quick buck
overseas and prostrating themselves to Chinese investors, of course.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Forced abortions generally happen in the countryside enforced by local village
officials who follow goals but with little oversight or direction by the
central government. I can guarantee that this doesn't happen in cities, and
most educated Chinese are as outraged as we are. The central government really
isn't that strong, and lots of crazy stuff happens outside of the big cities
driven by misguided ideology. Dictatorship is the wrong word.

Its not clear if the central government has the ability to eliminate
reeducation camps, but letting up on the one child policy will primarily
affect the cities as farmers are already aloud to have two.

~~~
rayiner
The "it doesn't happen in cities" dog won't hunt. That's the excuse people
give when women are stoned in Pakistan and Afghanistan for adultry, but
western newspapers rightly refuse to buy into it. With China they buy it hook
line and sinker.

While the Chinese government may not have the ability to micro-manage rural
areas, they certainly have much more authority to implement top-down measures
than the essentially non-existent governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Certainly, the Chinese central government seems to do fine when it comes to
implementing economic policies. Heck, rural counties in the U.S. often flail
around attempting to implement federal policies, but somehow they manage to
avoid killing newborns in the process.

Also, I'm not sure your premise is even true. See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Guangcheng](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Guangcheng)
("In 2005, Chen gained international recognition for organising a landmark
class-action lawsuit against authorities in Linyi, Shandong province, for the
excessive enforcement of the one-child policy. As a result of this lawsuit,
Chen was placed under house arrest from September 2005 to March 2006, with a
formal arrest in June 2006. During his trial, Chen's attorneys were forbidden
access to the court, leaving him without a proper defender."). Shangdong is
one of the most populous provinces in China, with almost 100m people.

~~~
selmnoo
> I didn't even know they still had these things. I figured they went away in
> the 1980's or 1990's.

I thought it was common knowledge. You could use the Hanlon's razor right
about now: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity [or some other non-significant chance reason].

Many American news companies do report on China's one-child policies with all
the gory details. I saw a documentary on it on PBS just last year. There are
lots of places where you can read up about that, just don't expect honest
journalism from Rupert Murdoch's WSJ.

One other point is, you probably see all the Malthusian theories on HN? This
is not limited to HN, you won't believe how many people in elite colleges and
institutions -- once you warm them up -- will confess that they think it's a
good thing that China has these policies. It's like a more extreme version of
family planning in their view, it's actually arguably a good thing in a lot of
people's thoughts. It's not as lurid and extreme as women being thrown acid to
their faces in Pakistan, or little girls being married at young ages against
their will -- there is no argument here that it's a bad thing. It's _easy_ to
do journalism in these cases, and the extreme nature of the content comes in
such a far-out way that journalists don't even need to sensationalize it to
package it for selling! In other words, lazy journalists will find easy
content first.

~~~
tptacek
Reeduction Through Labor is nothing remotely like the US prison system. It is
in fact an alternative to the normal Chinese penal system, in which people can
be sentenced to 1-2 years of hard labor with zero due process, entirely by the
fiat of the police.

------
pavlov
China should abolish the death penalty. It is abused in horrible ways
including forced organ harvesting.

The number of executions in China is a state secret, but it's estimated to be
around 5000 per year -- more than all other nations combined.

Bodies of executed prisoners have long been a major source of organ
transplants in China:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China)

According to several reports, political prisoners and prisoners of conscience
(e.g. Falun Gong members) are being executed in the thousands and harvested
for organs. These are not convicted murderers, but people who have never even
received a trial.

~~~
philwelch
This just in: Westerner demands that thriving civilization, centuries older
than his own, adopt his culture's standards of human rights.

~~~
pavlov
China's total lack of an independent justice system and the resulting
atrocities is not news, but bears repeating.

If you don't believe in universal human rights, there's probably nothing I can
say to convince you otherwise. I guess the 20th century's bloody history
didn't teach mankind very much, when people still look up to "thriving"
nationalist states that build economic growth on the tortured flesh of their
citizens.

~~~
philwelch
I don't like when other countries execute large numbers of people for reasons
I disagree with, but I'm not going to go over to China and tell them how to
run their country.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> but I'm not going to go over to China and tell them how to run their
> country.

That's the problem. Your (as a country or people) culture ends where basic
human rights begin.

~~~
philwelch
Maybe that's how it works in _your_ culture. But no, I don't think there's any
such thing as universal human rights, or at the very least, that such a notion
is just cultural imperialism with a friendly face.

------
timje1
What's interesting is that there's now a societal expectation to have one
child per couple, so the birth rate recovery will be spread across many years
or decades.

The economist has published several excellent articles on the modern impact of
the policy.

[http://www.economist.com/news/china/21573579-china-may-
have-...](http://www.economist.com/news/china/21573579-china-may-have-begun-
long-end-game-its-one-child-policy-experts-say-it-cannot-end-soon)

------
z92
Too little too late.

One reason why the west doesn't need to fear Chinese military power is that,
well China don't have any warrior left. If you are the only son, its your duty
to take care of you ageing parents instead of fighting at the borders.

~~~
oddx
Another effect of "single child policy" is significant prevalence of number of
men over women. And it's known for making society significantly more
aggressive.

~~~
shangxiao
"And it's known"...

~~~
oddx
If you are interested I recommend "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright, book
has more details on subject.

------
lylebarrere
Hopefully a positive step in the right direction, but I am reticent to believe
that the Re-Education camps will actually be abolished.

I'll believe that when all current prisoners in the labor camps are released.

------
ph0rque
Just speculating here, but could communism be eased out of China the same way
many countries peacefully abolished slavery?

~~~
JDShu
China is not Communist... maybe your question is can be restated as if China
will adopt democratic system eventually? I personally believe the answer to
that is that is has to, and yes it will probably be more stable compared to
the collapse of the Soviet Union - China has that, and it's own history of
revolutions, as a reference.

~~~
theandrewbailey
China not communist? It's right there in the name of the ruling party.

~~~
Jacqued
Well then I guess "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is a republic with
democratically elected officials.

There isn't a single communist country, and I don't think there has ever been
any. You could argue that Russia was on a path to communism in 1917, but Lenin
promptly put an end to it.

At most, China used to be (but isn't any more) a socialist country.

~~~
leokun
> There isn't a single communist country, and I don't think there has ever
> been any.

The Animal Farm problem I guess, maybe AI can help some day.

~~~
gambiting
Are you familiar with Ian Banks and his Culture books? This is basically what
happens - people created "minds", computers which run their societies,but
every person is provided with an infinite supply of anything they desire(it's
fabricated on demand) and everything(and I mean everything) is allowed, with
the exception of killing other people.

------
davidjgraph
Remember, this policy was formed some time after the Great Chinese Famine -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine).
I'm not agreeing with the way the policy was enforced, but it's an important
background context to why it came about. The population numbers were taking
off and this famine wasn't that long ago.

~~~
rayiner
Uh, the one-child policy was introduced almost 20 years after the Great
Chinese Famine. I question the implied causal link.

------
shangxiao
I think we can just kiss goodbye the hope that the world's population growth
will be curbed anytime soon...

~~~
virmundi
You're forgetting war. If countries do, indeed, go at each other for
resources, the overly populated country can just throw bodies at the problem
until they win. Look at the USA's wars. North v South, huge losses on the
North side compared to the South. North won because of more bodies. US v
Germany (both WW's), US lost millions more than German. Throw dough boys at
them until they run out of bullets.

China can do that in spades, especially against smaller countries like Japan.
Or the Koreans. Or the Taiwanese.

The end result is China significantly reduced its surplus population, leave
behind land, commerce centers, and getting spoils. Win-win for them since they
don't really seem to care about the human cost.

