One-Child Policy

Hi, China. We heart your art. We fear your culture.

In the early part of this new millenium, China wanted to put a halt to its crazy fast growing population. Did it encourage couples to, um, wear hats, or try other, creative means of recreational sex? Nope and a half. It simply created Orwellian laws that punished couples for having more than one kid.

The mandate led to one of the greatest slaughters of very young non-family-name-carrying little baby girls in history. Today, in the demographic, something like 2/3 of the population is male.

Did something suddenly change in the water supply, such that people started having that one kid as a male one? Yeah, we think not. So if you have a population of over a billion people, willing to make that kind of, uh, can we call it a sacrifice?...then what else will they do to "win"? We. Bet. Lots.

And oh, the conclusion to the One-Child Policy? It was stopped. Why? Ethical concerns over millions of dead baby girls left on the side of the road? Not at all. It was stopped because there is no such thing as "China" when it comes to laws like this. In fact, China is many cities, provinces, areas, industries. So what essentially happened was that the educated city-dwellers more or less followed the one-child laws and had way fewer kids...while the farmers did not follow those laws. So there was a relative explosion of children born to farmers in the outlying areas, and a paucity of the educated ones that the government really wanted. That's why they stopped.

Is there a Chinese Bob Dylan around to help frame things for us re: the modern China? We need you. Or Yu. Or whatever your name is.