China to Ease One-Child Policy; Will Also Abolish Re-Education Through Labor | Hacker News Reader

China to Ease One-Child Policy; Will Also Abolish Re-Education Through Labor

online.wsj.com

41 pointschaz49 comments

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 ("[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... ("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-... ("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.

Asking if the Chinese still perform full-term abortions a very loaded question. Do you still beat your wife?

Officially, it's always been illegal, though some officials have performed late term abortions as a result of pressure coming from above.

I believe the different regional bureaucracies and officials implement the rule differently. The one child policy has mostly been relaxed in the rural provinces, though these were also the places with the most horrific atrocities happening in them. Possibly, in some remote parts, late term abortions continue.

> Asking if the Chinese still perform full-term abortions a very loaded question.

Questions that go to revealing systematic infanticide are by their nature loaded.

> I believe the different regional bureaucracies and officials implement the rule differently.

You're telling me that a country that uses the death penalty for people shipping contaminated milk can't keep regional bureaucrats from murdering newborns?

> You're telling me that a country that uses the death penalty for people shipping contaminated milk can't keep regional bureaucrats from murdering newborns?

What kind of comparison is that? Even you should know that rules don't apply equally to people in positions of power.

No, your question is loaded because of the use of the word "still", not its content.

> You're telling me that a country that uses the death penalty for people shipping contaminated milk can't keep regional bureaucrats from murdering newborns?

That's actually very coherent: the weaker your grip, the more brutal you want to be. Mao was very fond of the Latin "Unum castigabis, centum emendates".

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.

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 ("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.

> 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.

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.

You still have this idea that China has a strong central government, which is not very true. The provinces have lots of autonomity, and even if higher officials are disgusted by rural official family planning practices, they hate whistle blowers more as they cause "loss of face."

We criticize Pakistan for failing to govern their rural parts adequately, the same happens in china just at a lesser extent. Heck, India is considered a "modern" democracy and they have larger problems than china in this regard.

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

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.

You're right, I'll tell China to get right on that.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> China should abolish the death penalty.

Every country should, not only China. A murder is still a murder, no matter where and why it's been committed.

I believe that it's useful. In the past century the death penalty should have only been used in a handful of cases.

It should be for the really "broken" people who are a danger to everyone no matter where they are. Gacy, Dalmer, etc.

Is it murder ? damn right. Do you keep a rabid dog alive because you think it's wrong to kill ?

> It should be for the really "broken" people who are a danger to everyone no matter where they are. Gacy, Dalmer, etc.

Yeah, but it's not. There are plenty of terrifying cases of people who were considered "broken", who were convicted and murdered by the system and later found innocent. Murder has no place in a modern society.

Don't you have prisons where you live? Do you know what a life sentence is? It is possible to have justice without committing the same murderous crimes as the criminals we have to protect the society from.

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-...

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.

One Child policy is not well implemented across China especially in the rural area. People from rural area is also over represented in the military. I don't have any numbers but I'll bet more than half that's in the service still have one or more siblings back home.

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.

"And it's known"...

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

I don't know if it makes society more aggressive, but women are the limiting factor in population growth so the excess men are essentially expendable, or would be but for their parents needing support.

What is a better proxy for military power: manpower or manufacturing capacity? I'd argue that war has become as high-tech and automated as everything else, and you no longer need a large standing army to dominate.

For certain aspects, you are correct - instead of sending in 75 infantrymen to hold a ridge, you can send in a few tanks and mechanized infantry using fewer people.

However, the somewhat perverse reality is that the logistics and support requirements of the two scenarios are equal if not higher for the latter. The more technology/mechanization, the more replacement parts, ground and support staff, fuel distribution, and so on are required.

On top of that, many of the very "high-tech" aspects of modern warfare that replace people have very limited utility. High tech aircraft, drones, and cruise missles can be used for tactical strikes to disrupt enemy operations, but they can't be used to hold ground.

If someone is working in a factory that makes weapons, that doesn't disqualify them from taking care of their parents like being on the front lines does.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

I haven't heard that the Great Firewall is gone. Seems you forgot about how the Arab Spring threw China into cringe mode, and arrested people like Ai Weiwei.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011...

Undemocratic ≠ socialist. This should be a fairly obvious statement, in the Year of Snowden.

I think "Communist" is a bit of a loaded word that in the my American mind is more linked to Stalin and Lenin than Mao and Deng, so I try to stay away from it.

It's probably much more accurate to say the Chinese government is authoritarian state-capitalist. Authoritarian: They don't care what you think, but you better do what they way. State-capitalist: there are large state-owned enterprises supported by preferential loans from the banks.

There is also a thriving private sector. The government's involvement in private sector businesses varies between "just please pay some taxes" for some types and sizes of businesses and heavy-handed regulation and interference in some sectors that makes success in those sectors without government friends nearly impossible.

To put this in perspective, do consider that the US government bailed out the banks and GM, and owns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So it's not as though the US is hands off. GM seems to be better run than large Chinese state-owned enterprises, which is saying a lot.

The farms and all businesses were communized back in the 60's, but no longer are, so far as I'm aware. The state does own land, which you lease for decades at a time (this is the same as Hong Kong, which is quite capitalist, btw).

Relaxing the one-child policy is a big deal. Given that countries have fewer children as they industrialize, I expect it won't lead to a population explosion.

I very much wish they would work on reducing the abortion rate by better educating children about having protected sex. I know a Biology teacher here who said her kids know lots about sex from the Internet, so maybe there's some hope that even the attenuated Chinese Internet can help here.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all blocked over here doesn't frustrate the hell out of me.

> The state does own land, which you lease for decades at a time (this is the same as Hong Kong, which is quite capitalist, btw).

In capitalist America, you can "own" land, unless you don't pay property tax or the government needs to build a bypass. A distinction without a difference.

It is not a distinction without a difference, for the obvious reason that appreciation of land value goes to owners but not leaseholders.

Unless you can sell your lease for a profit, which is the impression I got talking to someone in this situation.

American land ownership is "fee simple", which is derived from English law, where the Crown ultimately owns all the land, but grants the landowner unconditional fiefdom over it. You don't actually own property, but rather certain limited legal rights over it, which is how they can get away with property taxes and eminent domain.

Once Taiwan and Korea got rich and developed enough, they both ditched their dictatorships. I think the same thing will happen in China; it's just taking awhile because the country is huge.

Remember, this policy was formed some time after the 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.

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

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

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.

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