Missile Experts and Troubled Experts Part 1: Are Missile Experts' Population Policy Justified?

[Press: This is a comment made after " Reading <Only Child> and <Assembled Family> on Christmas Eve> ". Because it is relatively long, I will organize and supplement the two comments and publish them as two separate articles. If you have a different opinion on my article, you are welcome to link this article or other articles I have written - as long as you are willing to speak with facts, you can make sense, instead of picking up rubbish to sell anti-birth control groups who are not fact-checked lie. However, in order to avoid wasting each other's time, I recommend that you take a quick look at my previous articles (mainly focused on #fakemasteryifuxian ) before associating or tagging me , # anti-birth-control and #reproductivefreedom ), save me from repeating my views over and over again. 】

Whether the population policy formulated by missile experts is reasonable, I think, should be judged from two dimensions.

First, judging from the level of economic development when the family planning policy was formulated, can ordinary Chinese families properly support those children who are " freely bred " without restraint ?

Many people who deny the family planning policy are staring at the policy in the current social, economic and technological development environment, and unconsciously substitute the status of the "wall country" as the world's second largest economy into the situation at that time, but forget about it. At that time, the DPRK economy was on the verge of collapse and the people were struggling. And those patriarchal families that believe in more sons and more blessings and prefer sons to daughters only know that women are used as reproductive tools, and they hardly consider whether they can support and take care of the children they irresponsibly cast into the world.

Let me tell you two true stories that happened in my hometown. In the early 1970s, before the Cultural Revolution was over, my home village was still engaged in "big collectives", that is, all the villagers worked together to cultivate the land in the village. Each work point is equal to more than 1 cent, and the maximum can reach 2-3 cents. If the harvest is good in that year, the monetary value of 1 work point will be higher; if the harvest is bad, it will be lower. Time to reach 1 work point = 8 cents) to distribute agricultural products.

One year, the sweet potatoes were not fully ripe yet. A family with 4 children in our village was almost unable to open the pot. The mother of that family wanted to plan some sweet potatoes in the ground for the children to eat. The cadres in the team felt that it was a pity that the sweet potatoes were cut before they grew up, and it was unfair to other villagers, so she was not allowed to cut them. One side has a few mouths waiting to be fed, and the other side has to take into account fairness and the interests of the larger group. Both parties feel that they are reasonable and refuse to give in. In the end, the mother went out and cried and scolded. .

The other mom wasn't so lucky. It was an urbanite who was sent down to our village. The couple originally had three children and were short of food and clothing, so they sent their daughter away, leaving only two sons. However, both husband and wife are not strong in the labor force, especially the wife, who is frail and sick, and can't do heavy work at all, and the work points earned cannot support a family of four. One summer, seeing the child's hunger, the mother took the child to steal corn from the large group's field at night. There must be more than their family who were starving at the time. The large group's corn had been stolen several times. That night, the captain led a few people to ambush in the field to catch the thief. The mother and son just broke a few corns when they were found. The two sons were clever and ran away quickly. In order to protect the children, their mother fell behind and was beaten to death by the captain who caught the thief. The next day, they buried my mother quietly, not daring to make a sound, only saying that she died of illness. But everyone in the village knew that she was beaten to death for stealing corn. Their family did not dare to ask the village cadres to seek justice for their mother (otherwise they would be arrested and criticized as thieves), and the village cadres also pretended not to know that they had killed someone. This matter was over, and later their eldest son went crazy because of this and other things.

In the late 1970s, the rural policy began to loosen, and the production team allocated a small amount of private land to each household to grow vegetables, and the situation of the villagers' hunger was only slightly improved. But most people can barely keep enough food and clothing. When I was young, there was nothing to eat at home. Grandma saw that I couldn’t eat the rice mixed with sweet potatoes and corn at home. The pot cooks some white rice for me, and among the children in the village, I am already relatively happy. Grandma would take me with her when she visited relatives, so that I could have a chance to eat some meat and dip some oil and water. My mother is pitiful. Every time we visit relatives, we keep her at home to watch the house (there are many thieves in the village). She is home alone, and she often cooks a pot of clear water radish or sweet potato for rice, even a little oil is reluctant. put.

This is the situation in my hometown in the years when the family planning policy was formulated. I believe that the economic development level of most rural areas in the dynasty was similar to this. Because by the mid-to-late 1980s, when I was in elementary school and junior high school, every household in our village raised pigs by themselves and was able to eat meat. Although the economy was still not well-off, most people could at least wear clothes without patches. . But the teacher told us that some northern provinces are even poorer than ours, some families only have a pair of good trousers to wear, and usually the whole family stays on the kang and does not go out.

If you feel that these descriptions based on personal experience cannot reflect the whole picture of Chinese rural society when missile experts formulate family planning policies. Let’s compare China and India at that time: According to the data of the World Bank (you can search by entering the country + GDP on Google), in 1980 India’s GDP was 186.3 billion US dollars, China’s only 191.1 billion US dollars, only Less than 5 billion more than India. At that time, China's population was 981.2 million, and India's was 699 million. The per capita GDP was not as high as India's.

Do you think that under the social and economic development conditions at that time, it would be better to allow everyone to have "free birth" and then watch the born children die of starvation and die of illness, or to implement family planning so that people can have fewer children but not starve to death. Okay?

Second, to judge whether the family planning policy is reasonable, it is also necessary to compare the human rights conditions of Chinese women and children before and after family planning.

In the pre-family planning era when women were forced by the concept of having more sons and more blessings and valuing women over men, when mothers gave birth to baby girls that patriarchal families didn’t want, those living children were sometimes thrown directly into the toilet or basin. Families with a little more "kindness" would abandon or sell these baby girls. (Refer to " Destroying Human Nature, How Serious was the "Drowning and Killing of Girl Babies" in the Qing Dynasty? " and the Chinese Encyclopedia " Infant Drowning " entry)

This practice continued in some areas until before and after the reform and opening up. Among them, the most notorious "Changlezi" in Putian, Fujian: In the 1970s and 1980s, a large number of baby girls from Fuqing, Minhou, Changle, Yunguichuan and other areas were or Abandoned by their families, or cheated by "matchmakers", they are then trafficked to Putian, where they are sold as child brides like tofu and cabbage. (Refer to " Survey Says that Tens of Thousands of Child Brides in Putian, Fujian Are Abducted and Sold from Yunnan and Guizhou ")

Do you think drowning or selling these baby girls as child brides is more inhumane than forced abortion by family planning?

When it comes to forced abortions by family planning, it must be said that in East Asian countries, including the Xi Dynasty, there are countless women who are forced and seduced by their husbands' families to force pregnancy and become reproductive tools under the concept of having more sons and more blessings and preferring sons to daughters. A recent example of this is Li Lianglei, an elite woman who graduated from Columbia University, who gave birth to 3 children in 5 years until she gave birth to a son. A woman in Guangdong gave birth to 8 children to avoid her husband's domestic violence (refer to " Guangdong 36-year-old woman gave birth to 8 children to her ex-husband: I dare not fight when pregnant "), which is another extreme case. Do you think that these "free reproductive" women can really control their wombs? Can they really decide freely (and responsibly) whether or how many children to have children without being coerced by their husbands?

If they can't control their wombs, is family planning better than "free birth" to ensure that they are less controlled by their husband's family in terms of reproduction, and can better guarantee their right to have fewer children without having children? Don't forget that the right to have fewer children is also a reproductive right .

Of course, I do not deny that the implementation of family planning does have a rough side, and there are indeed many violations of human rights. But it is undeniable that family planning also protects the human rights of women and children (especially girls), intentionally or unintentionally .

After the implementation of family planning, the proportion of women receiving education and higher education in China has increased year by year, largely thanks to the one-child policy and economic development brought about by reform and opening up. In 1964, the proportion of female primary school students in China was only 35%, but after the implementation of family planning, this figure reached 44% in 1981. In 1965, the proportion of Chinese female college students among all college students was only 26.88%; by 2010, after the only child born in the 1990s grew up to go to college, the proportion of female college students in colleges exceeded half and reached 50.86%. (Refer to " Women: Greater Beneficiaries of China's Educational Development ")

For example, a rural only daughter like me, who was born in the first few years of the family planning policy, was able to receive higher education because I had no siblings to compete with me for the limited resources at home. When I was in junior high school, my academic performance was only considered to be above average among my classmates. There were at least two or three classmates with better academic performance than me, but in the end they all had more children in the family and their parents could not support them financially. They pursue their studies and go out early to seek jobs and make a living. Only one other classmate and I had the opportunity to go to university. Neither of us had the best economic situation in the local area, and it was only average. We were both only daughters in our family. I believe this is no coincidence.

Is the population policy formulated by missile experts reasonable? Women like me, who are in China and benefit from this policy, are better than some foreigners who cannot experience the historical development of China in recent decades and hold a kind of "why not eat meat" "Outsiders who view this policy may have more say.

In recent years, Chinese young people are reluctant to have more children, and some anti-birth control activists blame this on the brainwashing of family planning propaganda. Perhaps the reason that is closer to the truth is that the low birthrate brought about by family planning has given women more opportunities to enter the workplace, greatly improving their economic status, and at the same time enabling only children (especially only children) to receive more care from their families , have the opportunity to receive more and better education, and in fact better protect the human rights of these groups. And many of this group of young people are the beneficiaries of the family planning policy, and it is not surprising that they support this policy .

I once saw a young woman on Douban say: Family planning is the only thing the CCP has done right in the decades of its rule.

She expressed the voices of many ordinary people, which were collectively ignored by the anti-birth control media at home and abroad.