The main victims of China’s odious “one-child” policy are the millions of babies who were aborted and the women who were compelled — by force or threat of force — to abort, undergo sterilization, or both. But the policy has created another group of victims: Parents of only children who died. The financial futures of many of these “one-child policy” parents are now in jeopardy.
That’s in part because China does not offer aging citizens a generous safety net. Chinese children are expected to care for their parents and grandparents in old age.
Many parents — as many as one million, according to the Wall Street Journal — don’t have any living children to help care for them. These parents are victims of a policy that guided China’s family policy from the late 1970s until it was loosened last fall. And they are now speaking up.
As many as 2,000 of these parents demonstrated outside national family planning offices in Beijing on Monday. Most wore hats with the words “grieving parents” on them.
They are demanding that they receive compensation from the government, since their childlessness is party due to government policy. Many of these families have been victimized three times — once over being prohibited from having more than a single child; another over the death of that child; and now a third time over the government’s unresponsiveness to their plight.
This is just the latest unintended consequence of China’s one-child policy. Another is the estimated 100 million missing girls, the result of a strong male bias in Chinese culture. Many Chinese feel that if they’re going to be allowed only one child, they want to make sure it’s a boy. The policy has hurt the country’s employment situation, too, as there aren’t enough young workers to pay for a rising population of retirees.
Protestors say they are prepared to demonstrate for three days or until the government responds to their demands.
Read more about the protests here and here.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
