Chinese agency bans crude birth control slogans-
APPublished: August 05, 2007, 23:05
"Beijing: China's top family planning agency has cracked down on crude and insensitive slogans used by rural authorities to enforce the country's strict population limits, state media said yesterday.
Slogans such as "Raise fewer babies but more piggies," and "One more baby means one more tomb," have been forbidden and a list of 190 acceptable slogans issued by the National Population and Family Planning Commission, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Such slogans are often found painted on roadside buildings in rural areas.
China's 28-year-old family planning policy limits most urban couples to just one child and allows some families in the countryside to have a second child if their first is a girl.
Critics say it has led to forced abortions, sterilisations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to a traditional preference for male heirs, which has prompted countless families to abort female foetuses in the hope of getting boys.
The Chinese government contends that the one-child policy has helped prevent at least 300 million births - about the size of the US population - and aided China's recent, rapid economic development (Gulfnews.com, 2007)."
In China, there has always been a dire need for birth control as nearly one third of the worlds population lives in China and throughout nearby East-Asia. The slogans that have been banned would have created an absolute outrage if they had been used in the United States. The reactions would have gone much farther than any of us can imagine. This article interested me in particular because it shows the differences between Chinese culture and US culture. In terms of development, it is very interesting to see that nearly 300 million births have been prevented due to the one child birth policy, and has also aided in economic development for China.
LINK: http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/08/06/10144488.html
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2 comments:
It is interesting that you can see the clash of culture vs. modernization/development. In the culture, it is still desirable to have a boy instead of a girl - what I would call a "traditional" value. But this conflicts with the government regulations, which are obviously beneficial in terms of population control, but they are more "modern" values.
It is horrifying to think of so many deaths of female fetuses in line with one child policy. In the backdrop of outlandishing leap of Chinese economy, I think, women suffered most. Many women working in the rural fields and raising kids when their men went to cities for a better paying jobs. One of the reasons the Chinese people endured those crude propaganda for birth control was because they are so used to be silenced in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. I guess, the 2008 Olympics restore much of human rights in China.
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