As many as three million Chinese babies are hidden by their parents every year in order to get around the country’s one-child policy, a researcher has discovered.
According to research carried out by Liang Zhongtang, a demographer and former member of the expert committee of China’s Nati-onal Population and Family Planning Commission, “In 1990, the national census recorded 23 million births. But by the 2000 census, there were 26 million 10-year-old children, an incr-ease of three million. Normally, you would expect th-ere to be fewer 10-year-olds than new-borns, beca-use of infant mortality,” he added.
His findings suggest that the one-child policy may not have the grim consequences that have been widely predicted. According to China’s own figures, the traditional desire among Chinese families to have a boy, coupled with the one-child regime, should produce a surfeit of 30 million men by 2020, with many pa-rents allegedly using ultrasound to guarantee the sex of their child.
The Telegraph quoted 47-year-old Fu Yang, as saying: “I am the biggest offender against the one-child policy in China. I had seven daughters in just ten years.” Mr Yang and his rather more reserved wife are among the millions of Chinese parents who risk threats, fines and even imprisonment in order to defy the country’s one-child policy. The couple, who now lives a prosperous life in a small village outside the southern city of Xiamen, had to flee across three provinces and hide their children with friends in the past. “There were some difficult times. We were chased around and we had to live like beggars. But I never thought about doing otherwise. I’m aware that many people do not want their daughters, but we have a decent respect for life. In China, we think that when you have a child it is like dropping a piece of your own body from you, and we never considered the other options,” he said. Since 1978, China’s government has limited each couple to one child in a bid to stem the growth of the world’s largest population.