Population expert condemns China's one-child policy on 30th anniversary

Oct 6, 2010 / 23:03 pm

On Tuesday, population expert Steve Mosher condemned recent statements made by Chinese government officials praising the country's one-child policy. Mosher, who helped voice alarm over the policy when it took effect 30 years ago, decried situation as an “unmitigated social disaster.”

Commenting to China Daily on Sept. 27, National Population and Family Planning Commission leader Li Bin lauded the one-child policy, saying the country would continue to uphold it. Over the past 30 years in China, 400 million births have been prevented.

"Historical change doesn't come easily, and I, on behalf of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, extend profound gratitude to all, the people in particular, for their support of the national course," Li Bin said.

"So we will stick to the family-planning policy in the coming decades," she added.

In a statement on Oct. 5, however, Population Research Institute (PRI) president Steve Mosher called the country's one-child mandate an "unmitigated social disaster," making China the "ugly poster child of forced abortion and coerced sterilization."

Despite government officials' claims that the policy has helped China's economy and contributed to other social advances, Mosher argued that a primary goal of the mandate has been to "help maintain the muscular rigor of the one-party dictatorship that rules China."

"China is a police state, after all," Mosher continued, adding that "such a state, to remain strong, must have something to police. Economic controls have been loosened over the past 30 years, so control over other aspects of life must be tightened. The brutal one-child policy is one consequence of such a system's relentless drive for control over people's lives."

"The Chinese government," he noted, "supported by foreign population control zealots, believe that its program should be held up as a population control role model for the rest of the world.”

“In reality, it should be roundly condemned for its widespread and systematic violations of human rights, especially the rights of women.”

Mosher has been joined in his criticism of the one-child policy by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who recently appealed to President Obama to speak out in defense of the Chinese people “on this terrible anniversary,” noting “what an encouragement that would be for hundreds of millions of Chinese hearts, to suddenly feel that the leader of the free world understands and empathizes with their plight.”