Ethical issues of Chinas one-child policy

Ethical issues of mainland Chinas virtuoso- babe indemnityThe Chinese ideal of a family follows the Confucian intuitive feeling that the family should be big and complex. The father is to aim as m either sons as possible so that the son can fulfill his obligations to the father and t replace workforcet declination1.The family is very important for the Chinese that they sluice coined the term familism which is the basis of a kind of society distinctive from any other kind in the world2. This means that whatever the members of the family be doing should be precisely for the avail of their family. Beca recitation of familism, a Chinese join feels compelled to get to at least ane(a) male kid. The Chinese believe that having a son ordain expediency them in many ways and angiotensin converting enzyme of these is to ensure that their family line would be stretch come ond3.The family in the Confucian view stresses the significance of hierarchy. Confucius similarly tell th at in a relationship, one should command and the other should obey. It is now bash that the one who commands is the man or the elder, while the one who obeys is the woman or the younger person. The Chinese family is very paternalistic in a reek that it favors the men of the family more(prenominal) than the women4.Un bid in the West, children in China were not as treasured by their pargonnts. They were more of necessities for the families in particular in the cracker-barrel argonas, so that they could help their parents with work in the fields. Sons were especially valued because of their mightiness to provide for their parents and to carry on their family name, something that the women can never be able-bodied of doing5.The men are also the exclusively ones who birth direct nark to Heaven and they can perform rituals for their ancestors. The one who was in charge of the rituals is called the des cen conviction-line heir or the tsung-tzu6. For the Chinese, having a daughter would not be beneficial to them in any way because daughters would eventually leave them to join her husbands family. She would worship their ancestors and go to his family. Having a son would be an assurance to a family that the son would economic aid for his parents and stay with them even after he bouncings married7.The men of the family would also inherit the property that is left to them, and in that location is no way that a woman would be allowed to become heir to what has been left by the ancestors. An grammatical trip of this would be the opposition of Chu Hsi, one of the most influential leaders of the learn Way Movement, in his Family Rituals that a daughter cannot inherit her parents estate even when she had no (more) brothers. A woman, without brothers, inheriting the property of her parents was a Sung practice, still Chu Hsi emphasized that the males should be the ones inheriting the properties because if it were women, then such(prenominal) property woul d be obtained inappropriately8.Everyone knows more or slight how China is fair more developed and as a result, the community of China has been growing rapidly. China had to do something just or so the race issue because the g everyplacenment was not able to meet the needs of the citizens anymore. To sum up to that, death rates were also declining. The government had different programs to prolong a braces from having a child such as encouraging them to get married late. This constitution was implemented to answer the problems of overuniverse. Couples who abided by the policy would sop up incentives, while those who decide to have more than one child would have to pay the sanctions9.Chinas one child policy was launched in the class 1979 by former Premier Deng Xiao Ping10. The main purpose of this policy is to obstruction the rapid population growth of the domain that was overtly evident during the year 1949, when the population was nearly half a billion, the uniform term when the Chinese Communist Party was establishing itself and thought that this concern would hinder development11. The policy was not supposed to be permanent precisely because it was victorious, they decided to continue implementing it. It was also not applied to all places in China. Places that do not practice the policy are Macau, Hong Kong and mainland China, and in total only about 40% of the Chinese population practice the one-child policy12. The policy itself is not undecomposedy un solid groundable since it had a practical purpose of pictureling the population growth which was certainly necessary at that moment. The only time it gets out of hand is when the Chinese norm of favoring sons enters the picture. The fact that a family has to have only one child is absurd. How can the government of China expect to instruction millions of families in the soil? Is this even possible?In the urban areas, deal found it difficult to resist this policy because of their social and economic conditions as well as the strict ruling of their leaders during that time. However, this is not the case in rural areas wherein active resistance could be matchn everywhere. This is because of their childrens contribution to the true Chinese agricultural family and for their role in preserving the family line. Because of the unfairness of this policy, a batch of concourse resisted in three forms first was when the targets confronted the implementers of the policy back was the shunning from the policy by either deceiving rural cadres or colluding with sympathetic ones trine was to appear to be complying with what the state cute but defying them at the same time. This means that the state succeeds when the couple would obey the states policy of having only one child (even if they want more), but the same couple would reveal the knead of a counter-discourse that challenges the states ideological claim to dominate child- electric charge when they practice egg-produ cing(prenominal) infanticide. Couples would then resort to ultrasound technology, wherein a rural or urban couple can engineer the shake of their bollix13.The problem of population growth can be seen mostly in rural areas since 80 per cent of Chinas population is rural and 87.2 per cent of conducts occur there. The government tried to reason out with the peasants regarding the change in family size but they were not successful in changing their minds. By the year 1970, incentives and penalties were introduced as part of the two-child policy campaign. These were even highlighted during 1979, when the one-child policy was finally launched14.Why the Chinese peasants preferred to have a tumid family is out-of-pocket to economic reasons. They felt that having a large family would bring more advantages for them, as compared to having only one child. The advantage would be that the family would receive an parcelling of grain distributed on a per capita basis. The same goes for the al location of land that is why sooner a little in the rural areas can pass their homes when they expand their families15. Sometimes, these children would help their parents by gathering materials related to the maintaining of the land such as water and fuel. They would also feed the animals and weed private plots. These tasks could be done even by children, thus it helps the parents prepare for the more stern chores. Their children are also the only large-scale investments of the peasants because sons join the work personnel department and they eventually have to provide for their families16.The preference for sons is also evident in the rural areas because they continue their family line, whereas most of the women get married outside their village, live with their in-laws and join their labor force. This preference is also reflected in a scan conducted during the year 1981. The participants are those couples who had a second child. 42.61 per cent of the 1000 participants had one son and 57.39 per cent had a daughter. When they were asked why they had another child, 50.5 per cent verbalize that they wanted a boy and only 11.4 per cent said that they wanted a girl. This clearly indicates that majority of the respondents prefer a son over a daughter17.Because they had to, the people from the rural areas utilize different manners to tabularize the creation of children. Some relied on the low cost methods of contraception such as IUD and the second method is sterilization. However, those with only one child have a hard time using this method because they would examine having a second child in replacement of the first one just in case the first one dies or becomes disabled. They do not take pills that much because it is more expensive and supply could be a problem for them. In some rural areas, particularly in Sichuan, vasectomy was used. Both men and women had more complaints regarding the side-effects of this method because the men claimed to be losing th eir strength. However, this method became very trenchant because Sichuan was most successful in reducing its birth rate. on that point was also induced miscarriage, which was originally just a bear out up method and was not really meant to be an independent election for contraception18.Despite the resistance, people still follow because there would be incentives and penalties obligate just to make sure that no one go out go against the policy. Among the many incentives are a nutrition allowance, a full adult grain ration and free medical, educational and kindergarten facilities for the child. An example of the penalties on the other hand is the deduction of the couples income by 20 per cent from the time the second pregnancy is discovered but this 20 per cent impart be returned to them if they had the child aborted. There are times when a couple is allowed to have a second child. Among these are if the first child suffers from a disability that would hinder him from working o r if twain are abroad Chinese who have just returned from another country19.The policy was more successful in the urban areas than in the rural areas. This could be due to the aim of the government that 95 per cent of the married couples in the cities and 90 per cent in the countryside lead have only one child so that by the end of the century, China could limit their population to about 1.2 billion20.As early as 1955, family planning was being enforced in the urban areas of China21. Chen Da, a pioneering demographer, emphasized that people who received education overseas would more likely have less children because they have a background on birth control22. The people from the urban areas were more open and accepting of the one-child policy because for one, there were efforts to swot up the status of the women by letting them enter into the labor force. Child bearing and rearing are not the only things that a woman is terpsichore to do with all the work that she has23. The Chi nese from urban areas also see children as more of an economic liability because it requires a lot of effort, maintenance and resources (like money) to raise them but these children contribute little to the lives of their parents24.Different families have various practices or methods to get rid of a daughter. One of these is female infanticide or the intentional killing of baby girls25. The couple exit resort to female infanticide to try their luck again hoping that they would get a boy the second time around (or kill the girl when the mother gets pregnant with a boy)26just so they could comply with the policy that was being implemented27. There are also hospitals in China that have contraceptive adept guidance institutes. These institutes have lower level workers who are trained in the four operations which are tubectomy, vasectomy, insertion and removal of the IUD, and induced spontaneous spontaneous abortion28. IUD and sterilization are widely used in China in fact, as many as 50 per cent of the Chinese rely on IUDs and sterilization is the second most widely used form of contraceptive method29.Partly because of these methods, it became possible for China to control its people. Again, the want of preventing overpopulation is not a bad thing. In fact, it would be face-saving to the government so that it could rule the country better. However, is this in humanse policy the only option that they had? Is it really success that they are achieving? Would they call this successful when they know that there are innocent babies killed along the way?The Chinese whitethorn have controlled the growth of their population but they are also encountering problems as they go along with their one-child policy. This policy has prevented around 4oo million births, according to Chinese officials30. Because there are fewer children that are born, there is an expanding population of the elderly. This is a problem because there would be less number of young laborers in the future when the elderly die31. Another problem is the ratio of men and women because men have been outnumbering women already by about 60 million. This mental unsoundness amidst men and women would make it difficult for the former to look for wives therefore they can result to human trafficking of women and children32.The policy is even crueler because of the inequality between men and women. The government has been addressing this issue saying that men and women must be equal at all costs and that this equality has to be promoted by dint of media. People who commit infanticide, those who neglect or abandon their children or any act that would harm people especially female babies must be punished33. If the government really means this, then they could already vacate with the payment of fines for having more than one child and just have a law against female infanticide, or better yet just terminate the policy.Unfortunately, the Chinese will still be continuing this policy in the coming decades to control the population growth in their country34. jibe to the official and minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, Zhang Weiqing, China will not make any changes for about another decade because it has been effective in irresponsible their population growth. Since Chinas population is growing by 17 million per year (according to China Daily as of 2008), abandoning the policy would have major fluctuations in population growth. Officials said that the one-child policy was the only picking that was available and realistic at the time of the construction of the policy, but they are now considering amendments to it, but abolishing it would cause many problems35.The Philippines is also experiencing an event that is quite similar to the policy that China has implemented on its country for a long time. There may be many people in the Philippines, but they are still able to live their lives normally because the resources are sustaining them. There would be no poor people if only there was equal distribution of resources to all the Filipino people. The church also claims that mendicancy is not because of overpopulation but is due to the ir liable and corrupt government that the country has36, but what exactly is overpopulation? As defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary, overpopulation is the condition of having a population so dense as to cause environmental deterioration, an impair quality of life, or a population crash37.The option that the lawmakers are considering is the Re increaseive Health woodpecker that promotes information on and access to both natural and modern family planning methods, which are medically safe and legally permissible38. The difference of this from Chinas one-child policy is the variation of the Filipino and Chinese mastermind that the former does not favor any gender because Southeast Asiatic countries tolerate both genders. The cause is the same-which is to control population growth, b ut the motive is different because while China intends to just control their population, the Philippines aims to eliminate poverty by controlling the population growth.The cause may be fair but some parts of the bill are disadvantageous to the lives of the Filipinos, especially the Filipino women. Some institutions are supporting the RH Bill like the National Council of Churches in the Philippines or NCCP, saying that the Reproductive Health Bill does not necessarily promote anything illegal such as abortion39. However in the bill, it is said that women with post-abortion concerns will not be treat differently40. Does this mean that the government will still tolerate abortion even if they mentioned in the bill that abortion is illegal? Is what the NCCP saying about the bill not promoting abortion true?Another is the mandatory brace education for elementary students41. Some parents have a difficult time explaining to their children about how they came to life or even talk about sex with them. Usually parents would wait for the right time to educate them about these things so that the child would understand better. If the law requires mandatory sex education, then these children will be more curious and try to experiment things and be clear at a very young age.Just like Chinas one-child policy, the RH Bill may have a good purpose but its execution and some of the policies in it are not beneficial. The bill promotes responsible parenthood42but does this responsibility involve the choice between having the baby and having the baby aborted?If there is the belief that the Philippines is overpopulated, then why not use this to our advantage? Why not use the money for creating jobs alternatively of expense so much on contraceptives (or letting the corrupt officials keep the money) that will not bring any benefit to a persons life? Our righteousness is also different from the Chinese. Filipinos do not see their children as economic liabilities because Filipinos are more emotionally attached to their children. The punishments in case of non-compliance utter in this bill will also have a large(p) impact in the lives of the Filipinos who are compelled to comply with the provisions43.Filipinos must be alarmed that there is so much poor people because the population is rapidly increasing that is why they are assuming that the country is becoming overpopulated and we need to solve this problem. However, the Philippines does not need the RH Bill because the country is not overpopulated. There is the assumption that poverty and overpopulation are connected, and by controlling the population, poverty will be reduced. According to Simon Kuznets, a Noble honor Winner and author of Population and Capital Growth, there is no clear connection between overpopulation and economic development44. Places such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are overpopulated but still flourish. The population density of Taiwan is 1,460 per square mile but CIAs World Fac tbook 1999 stated that Taiwans per capita gross domestic product is $16,50045What the Filipinos need is a better and more capable government instead of implementing an unnecessary law. As for China, they are also starting to question their proclaim policy46and because they are already having doubts, then it is best that they reconsider instruction execution it for another decade. By doing this, China would cease to harm innocent human beings and prevent the Philippines from following the footsteps of China in putting something unethical into practice.