economy - The one-child policy: a success, a failure or a disaster?

a potential winner

Maria Trombly was kind enough to send me this link of the Eastwest Center on China's one-child policy, now 25 years in place. (They urgently need an RSS-feed!) While the piece by Wang Feng avoids the usual hysteria about the negative aspects of the policy, it still assumes too much. For example it assumes that the policy has been implemented in the whole of China, while there are strong indications that the country side has in different degrees not complied with the policy. Figures on China's population are unreliable and the 'hidden' population might still offer enough "people's power" to help in a aging society.

James Farrer says in my book that despite the lack of compliance, it still means that hundreds of million of Chinese have not been born, making the policy into a success anyway. He points also at the great benefits for Chinese women, who are the biggest winners of the one-child policy.

For the first time in the Chinese history, women have a position in society that is equal to that of men, getting the same education and chances in the society. Those hundreds of million often unmarried women are going to make a huge difference in China, Farrer thinks. "Chinese women will take the lead in getting social accomplishments for women in the 21th century."