One-Child Policy Latest Victim of China’s Anti-Corruption Drive

The gradual abandonment of the one-child policy allows China to tackle demographic, corruption, security, and economic challenges in one deft swoop; defusing discontent and saving face for Beijing.
Last week’s announcement by Beijing that it will be phasing out its longstanding ‘one-child policy’ created headlines around the world. The one-child policy has been a fixture of China’s domestic policy for decades, and became so (in)famous that it remains one of few things about Chinese politics that the general public can recall offhand.
While commentators in the West are heralding the long overdue demise of a draconian and anachronistic policy, this is not how the issue is being presented by Beijing.
The phasing out of the one-child policy is not being billed by Beijing as an about-face, but rather a reform, since the original goal of instigating a precipitous decline in population growth has been achieved. Moreover, an outright cancellation would imply that the central government made a mistake in the first place.
Instead the one-child policy has become the latest target of Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive. Fortunately for Beijing, the policy also touches on economic and stability concerns, making its reform a multifaceted boon for Beijing.
Population Growth and Political Graft
China’s fertility rate has plummeted from more than 6.16 live births per woman in the mid-1960s to just 1.66 births per woman in 2012; far below the replacement rate of 2.1. This decline was brought about via the strict enforcement of the one-child policy; an undertaking that employs 500,000 officials and led to 336 million legally mandated abortions (not including millions of ‘unofficial’ ones) as well as 197 million sterilizations.
The policy created an entire shadow economy consisting of black market abortion clinics, forged birth certificates, and fake medical records. Then there are also the illegal sales of contraceptive and abortion pills, underground pregnancy tests, black market human egg rackets, and the infamous fetal gender tests. Add to this all the bribes to officials to look the other way, forged government records and extortion by local authorities, and you have one of the largest sources of corruption in the country.

This post was published at FinancialSense on 11/02/2015.