One-Child Policy Cost China Nearly 400 Million People

One-Child Policy Cost China Nearly 400 Million People
By Daniel Doherty
9/20/2011






Earlier today, a former health secretary in the Chinese government acknowledged that China’s one-child policy has reduced the population by as many as 400 million people. For those who remember Vice President Joe Biden’s reprehensible statement last month, when he asserted that he “understands” China’s macabre policy that tolerates infanticide and forced abortion, U.S. lawmakers have now learned that there are as many as 37,000 abortions performed there every day. Read the full article here to learn more:

In a Budget Committee members-only meeting on Tuesday, Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a pro-life Kansas Republican, asked Gao Qiang, who served for two years as the Party Secretary for the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China, about the country’s population control policy. Through an interpreter, Gao told members in attendance that the population of China has 400 million fewer people that had the coercive family planning policy not been in place.

Gao also pointed out that China has lost more people than the overall population of the United States, estimated at 312 million.

“I was shocked to hear a Chinese official admit how many people have been lost as a result of the country’s population control policy,” Congressman Huelskamp said. “The fact that this policy has resulted in the loss of more people than the overall population of the United States is an eye-opening figure.” In raising the policy with the former health minister, Hueslkamp told LifeNews.com in an interview that he brought up the concerns the Chinese nation is already seeing in terms of not having enough people as active workers to take care of its increasingly aging population base. Huelskamp used the occasion to discuss how China faces a major demographic problem as a result of having so few young people to support the country’s aging population.

In an interview, he told LifeNews that Gao claimed China has enough people to care for their elderly and talked about older people frequently moving in with their children or grandchildren to provide them care. Gao told Huelskamp that he and his wife are each one of seven children — something not seen any longer in a nation where most people are under a one-child policy, and face a maximum of two children in rural areas.

Gao indicated China is examining loosening the policies, which will be the subject of a Congressional hearing on Thursday. He said 12 percent of the population is above the age of 60, though Huelskamp said he believed the figure to be higher. He said Gao indicated Chinese officials are aware of the impending population instability and the issues it will cause, but he shed little light on what the Chinese government will do to curb the problem.
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