China’s stolen children
I thought I was beyond being shocked, but this engaging and secretely filmed documentary was shocking to us in the West. It isn’t about the treatment of Tibetans, but about the effects of the One Child Policy.
It was aired on the Australian ABC 4 Corners program tonight (21 April 2008)
I’ll just quote here how it is written up:
By one estimate about 70,000 children are kidnapped and sold on the black market in China each year.
Untold thousands of other people are tragically affected by the trade… this film features remarkable access to those at its core: desperate parents searching for a stolen son; a trafficker who brokers deals and who sold his own child; a young couple having to give away their newborn daughter; a private investigator who hunts for stolen children; a boy rescued from traffickers.
In modern China, baby girls can be sold for as little as $500. Boys cost $1000-plus. “China’s Stolen Children” intimately reveals the depth of this tragedy and explores the connection between child trafficking, an alarming shortage of girls and the country’s stringent birth control policy. It’s a link the Chinese Government rejects.
I always disapproved of the idea that the Chinese only wanted boys, thinking that was just a sexist practice, but this program explains why. Given that a married couple can only have one child (and they have to get a permit to do so) and there still seems to be no social security in China and no old age policies, the male child is preferred because the female child, when she gets married, goes to live with the male’s family. Hence if you have a female you have no support in old age.
People must be married (and to get married they must be over 20) and then must apply for the permission to have their one child. Of course, many children are born without those protocols being met, in which case the child will be a non-person. So the parents of those children must pay a large fine. What if they can’t pay it? They can find themselves in a situation of having to sell their child. And there are many couples who can’t have children. Supply and demand realizes the need for traffickers, who make a large cut for themselves of course. We see all this in the film.
There are other consequences of the One Child Policy. The detection of the child’s sex by scanning is illegal in China, but of course ignored for the reasons I just gave. Female foetuses are regularly aborted. Hence, there are now millions of men of marriageable age who will never find a wife.
I’ve never been a supporter of Communist China in that (though I’m a Marxist), I never considered that Mao was anything but a dictator and not the product of a socialist revolution. Mao was a Stalinist and got rid of millions of people, who might have threatened that dictatorship. The “Free World” has us believe that all Communist countries will inevitably be run by a dictator. I reject this notion.
Anyway, I was shocked because you don’t get to see much that really goes on in China. Of course, trafficking of women and children go on in other countries, but the government doesn’t seem to be addressing this problem in any way. Is the One Child Policy still viable? Is it still necessary? Why not educate the population out of the old customs of the female bride always having to go to the males family to live?
My heroes: the reporters and the Chinese people who allowed this film to be made.
