FROG: A Tale of Chinese Single Child Policy

FROG: A Tale of Chinese Single Child Policy

MoYan is one of the most renowned contemporary Chinese novelist. Many know him from the recent Nobel prize in literature grant in 2012. As an admirer and homble student of Chinese modern literature, my encounter with Mo started with Frog, a story about a government staff whose sole life was dedicated to the enforcement of  single child policy in rural China. The name itself Frog is a symbol of maternity; bearing children of hundreds and sperm-shaped tadpoles. 

Now, the intention of single child policy was to control China's population surge in the early 1980s and to keep the overall population in China within its environmental and social capacity (which was believed to be 700 million in 1979). At the time this policy had encountered heavy resistance during its introduction to rural areas. Because at the time many areas in rural China were still relying on labour-heavy traditional agriculture and the most guranteed way to make ones familty competitve in that environment was to breed more people: especially male. The enforcement of the policy was difficult and the method used by the government can be punishing: a familty can literally lose all its property by voliating the rules to have a second/third/forth child. There were many odd stories born in that strange era. Many rural families live a life of fugitives, running away from their home just to keep their unborn male children from forced abortion. After a couples years of living on the road, they would come home, with no speakable property left in their name, no jobs, no supports, nothing but their precious male babies who didn't even have legal identities because they were not supposed to be born.

And this was very much the story of Frog, and stories of many Chinese families in a era of despair. What we can learn from this is, that when trying to resolve a social sustainability issue, any government intervention must tread extra carefully. A good intention without supervision can often cause more harm to the community than good. For example, restraining the expension of chemical plant might be a good thing for the environment, but the Union of workers will be upset due to the loss of potential employment. And immigrantion is a good thing for long term economy and diversity, but it will hurt labour intensive employment for the locals in short term. Tread carefully, for the road is long, and the dawn is far.

Reference:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1215519