6. One Child

2005

9 May 2005. "We Want to Push the Limits" BY CRAIG SIMONS. Newsweek. These Chinese road warriors seek fun, thrills and freedom. ...Yuan Jun likes to have his foot on the gas. Wearing rose-colored glasses and a tan aviator vest; he rests one hand on the steering wheel of his Toyota Land Cruiser and holds a CB radio mike in the other. ...He's busy snapping instructions into the CB for a line of SUVs-Jeep Grand Cherokees; Isuzu Rodeos; Nissan Paladins-strung along the highway behind us. Since he bought his first car in 1991, Yuan figures he's clocked more than 600,000 miles, .... "In the city," he says, "everything seems the same--the same work, the same people, the same experiences. On the road, it's all new." That restless spirit-the urge for novel experiences, the quest for new frontiers, the possibilities for escape and renewal, even the willingness to slog through traffic to get to work--has long fueled America. Now it's gripping China. Even 10 years ago, when the average American spent nearly an hour driving each day, the Chinese owned only 10.4 million vehicles, almost all of them in government and corporate fleets. Today that number has grown to more than 23 million. New sales surged 82 percent in 2003 and 11 percent last year, even after Beijing slapped curbs on bank loans to slow its red-hot economy. More than 40 million Chinese have driver's licenses, and a 2003 survey by Swiss consulting firm CBC found that 40 percent of Chinese families are planning to buy new automobiles. "Cars have given people a chance to pursue freedom," says Beijing University sociologist Xia Xue Ian. "They have opened up a space for private life." ...Beijing has pumped billions of dollars into making travel easier. The length of China's highway network is second only to the United States and the government announced in January that it will spend $200 billion over the next 25 years to nearly triple that; total mileage is expected to surpass America's around 2020. ... A few miles up the road we pulled into a dusty Sinopec gas station and topped up with 93-octane fuel. Compared with the U.S., the price of $1.84 a gallon is low, but for most Chinese, filling up an SUV would cost at least a weeks earnings. ...China's thrill ride has obvious costs. Since 1985, the number of people killed on Chinese roads has increased fivefold: in 2003, more than 104,000 Chinese were killed in traffic accidents, more than double the U.S. total-even though the U.S. has almost nine times as many cars. Another cost is the price of oil: while Mideast instability and other factors have contributed to recent $56 per barrel prices, so has Chinese consumption-China's oil imports doubled over the past five years, much of that to fuel the country's transportation boom. The longer-term shifts are also ominous. According to the World Wildlife Fund, China already produces 16 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, and within 30 years it's expected to contribute as much to climate change as the U.S., currently responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide pollution. If every Chinese citizen consumed as much energy as Americans do, China would use all the petroleum currently produced in the world. Chinese scientists have tracked some of the 46,000 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau with increasing alarm. Some scientists predict that rising temperatures will melt most of China's glaciers within this century, taking with them the sources of Asia's greatest rivers-the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Indus, the Mekong.Yuan understands the dangers, but he notes that Americans now are having more impact on the global environment. And what are they doing about it? "We want to enjoy the best life we can have," he says. ...

2004

14 September 2004. NY Times. Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer As urbanites demand better air and water, China's countryside is increasingly becoming a dumping ground.

April 2004. Issue of The Gazette, Volume IV, Issue IV, (from Population Connection) has updates on changes to China's One-Child Policy.

14 April 2004. Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report. Chinese Province Relaxes One-Child Policy; Divorced Couples Who Remarry Allowed Second Child in Shanghai.

12 April 2004. Social Effects of One-Child Policy Arise (From "'One Child' Generation Grows Up to Face Strained Family Relations." Xinhua General News Service). A recent survey conducted by a Chinese family education research group found that overall strained family relations are one product of China's controversial one-child policy. Chinese culture has nicknamed China's first one child generation as "little emperors," as these children were a main focus in the lives of their parents and grandparents. Now as these children are becoming adults and leaving home, their upbringing tends to have multigenerational affects. The survey found that as many as 60 percent of one-child couples are unable to handle parenting and have turned to their own parents for a large amount of the childcare duties. Also, the parents of this one child generation feel neglected as their grown-up children, the main focus of their lives for many years, are often too busy to spend any time with them. China has also seen a rise in marital conflict because the participants in one-child couples tend to have very strong characters and are not very capable of resolving conflict. In order to prevent this trend from trickling down to the next generation, sociologists suggest working on traits like tolerance and practicing conflict management techniques at an early age and integrating these skills into early childhood education curricula.

8 April 2004. Sex Imbalance Alarms India. (From "Sex Ratio Imbalance Alarms India." United Press International.) In a situation similar to one that China is facing, the results of India's 2001 census indicate an increasing shortage of girls. In 1991, just ten years before, 945 girls were being born for every 100 males. The 2001 number dropped to 927 girls for every 1000 males. This produces a shortage of 35 million girls. Traditionally a patriarchal society, India is claiming that the intense desire for boy children has lead to a pattern of selective abortions. India had previously banned both sex determination tests and selective abortions nationwide. Social activists and health officials said that, despite the regulations, female feticide is occurring all over the country. In specific regions, numbers have dropped as low as 793 females for every 1000 males. As always, any sex imbalance can lead to several possible consequences of a large male to female gap, such as an increase in crime, a decrease in women's rights and impacts on national and international politics.

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