One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

An intimate investigation of the worldâ€™s largest experiment in social engineering, revealing how its effects will shape China for decades to come, and what that means for the rest of the world

When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birth-rates would help lift Chinaâ€™s poorest and increase the countryâ€™s global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers.

Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policyâ€™s repercussions on every sector of Chinese society. In One Child, she explores its true human impact, traveling across China to meet the people who live with its consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality: unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only-children supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages teeming with ineligible bachelors, and an ungoverned adoption market stretching across the globe. Fong tackles questions that have major implications for Chinaâ€™s future: whether its â€œLittle Emperorâ€ cohort will make for an entitled or risk-averse generation; how China will manage to support itself when one in every four people is over sixty-five years old; and above all, how much the one-child policy may end up hindering Chinaâ€™s growth.

Weaving in Fongâ€™s reflections on striving to become a mother herself, One Child offers a nuanced and candid report from the extremes of family planning.
Country USA
Manufacturer Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2020-06-11
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2020-06-11
Format	Kindle eBook

One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

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