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Friday, November 15, 2002
Lee: One child policy
By Kelvin Lee
Over twenty years ago, the Chinese leaders meant well when they attempted to control the country's population. Not only did they insist on birth control methods but they even limited the number of children allowed in a family.
TO combat a population explosion, the leaders of China decreed back in the late 1970s that each set of parents were allowed only one child apiece. Any extra child would be punished by financial sanctions and various other penalties.
And thus was born the one-child policy. Even with this limitation, China's population still remains the largest in the world, dwarfed by no other country.
Not even India can come close, although there are reports that given another hundred or so years, they can possibly match or even overtake China in the population race. But that is not the point of today's column.
Over twenty years ago, the Chinese leaders meant well when they attempted to control the country's population. Not only did they insist on birth control methods but they even limited the number of children allowed in a family.
However, this has now become a cause for concern. For in concentrating all their efforts in eliminating one problem, another has grown in its place.
China, by creating its one-child policy, is now grappling with another deadly problem, that of juvenile delinquency and crime.
Let me expound a bit by imagining ourselves into the life of a single child in a household. Let us imagine a boy (boys are favored over girls in Chinese society) with no brothers or sisters, but with a set of often-busy parents and two sets of dotting grandparents.
Plus, there is usually the extra unmarried aunt or uncle who dotes on this same child in lieu of their own. In such a household, the boy, whom we shall dub Li, is given almost anything he wants. If Li wants a toy, his grandparents will probably argue among themselves as to who will get the honor of buying it for him.
If Li is hungry, they will do their best to feed him with his favorite dishes. If one of his elders, whether father, mother or grandfather, refuses him something, he need only go to another set to have his wish granted. This phenomenon has come to be called the Little Emperor syndrome, something somewhat unique to China.
There is another term that can be applied to these new generation of children: spoiled brats. For that is what they are. The one child policy has actually gone and created a whole generation of youth that is universally trained to getting what they want. So just about every young one under the age of twenty running around here in China is a brat, pure and simple.
It is, admittedly, harsh to brand every young one a brat. True, not all of them are, but far too many have become so due to their upbringing and the culture that has sprung up around the single child family. Whatever the child wants, he gets. If he doesn't get it, he cries and another person (uncle, aunt, grandma, etc.) will get it for him. What does that teach the child?
Thus we have the here and now, with a generation of these little emperors grown up and preparing to take over for their elders. We now have Chinese kids, male and female, drinking and smoking at an all too early age. We now have crime: theft, drugs, rape, assault, vandalism, sometimes even murder. Many of them committed by teenagers and twenty-somethings.
China, its hands full with its ascension to the World's ranks, has paid almost no mind to this growing internal problem. Though crime and its subsequent aftereffects is not yet all encompassing and prevalent here in China, it is beginning to be. People who once trusted each other are no longer as willing to do so.
Taxis have bars and grills separating the driver from the passenger. Banks have extra security despite the fact that there is a permanent gun ban in the country. Drugs and alcohol are readily available (although the government will never admit to this), as are fake DVDs, clothes and just about everything else.
There is no real proof that all these crimes were caused by the carefree attitude of the youth. But I find it interesting that this all came to be around the time when those "little emperors" began to hit their adolescence, a time which has traditionally been considered the rebellious stage of any youth in any country.
Kind of makes you think, doesn't it? (Visit the writer's website at www.babbleon5.blogspot.com or email him at babbleon@atenista.net) |
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