Reason Number 14 - The Glass Children
Rabu, 06 Agustus 2008
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‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 27
"The Glass Children of China now number over 90,000,000 according to figures provided by government authorities in Beijing. They are the children that have been allowed to be born to couples since the 1979 implementation of the ‘One-Child Policy,’ which constitutes the largest birth control restriction in the history of mankind.
They are ‘glass’ children because they are easy to see through or perhaps see ‘into,’ seeming to have a similar set of physical and psychological problems. The Glass Children of the one-child policy are also very fragile.
These ‘Little Emperors’ and ‘Little Empresses’ are only-children and are the object of their parents’ love as well as that of four grandparents. Such children are often known as ‘one mouth, six pocket’ children. Even though boys tend to be spoiled more than girls, both boys and girls suffer from an excess of love and an upbringing that would be considered astonishingly cosseted by any world standard.
According to Chinese media reports, they are ‘described by critics as spoiled, self-centered and in need of discipline.’ Their built-in fragility is quickly exposed should a parent ever actually say ‘No.’
Those Glass Children born since the early 80s are now of legal marriage age in China (20 for women, 22 for men), and now adult psychological problems are beginning to surface. Tan Jianfeng, a psychological expert, said that China had around 16 million patients with psychological problems, one third of who witnessed the first symptoms during their childhood or puberty. It is estimated that psychological problems exist in some 20% to 30% of the population, but that most sufferers are children.
Even though through their young years to adulthood these 90 million plus children have such similar and easily-identifiable psychological problems, they have few resources to call upon.
China has only 17,000 professionally registered psychiatrists, according to the Chinese Psychiatrist Association. That is 113,000 psychiatrists short of what is needed to meet rising demands. Another estimate puts the figure at an astonishing 2.4 psychologists per million people. Most Western countries have a 10-times better ratio."
ChinaBounder comments:
It’s a common enough stick the West uses to beat China, the one-child policy. But for me the real problem is simply one of legitimacy. The human race is clearly expanding too fast and if, as a species, we do not control our reproduction, then there can be little hope for a fair existence for most of us. The world will simply polarize into a few haves and billions of have-nots.
In those terms, then, China is showing leadership. But it is not so, really, for the choice to limit the size of a society must be taken by that society. In the case of China, the one-child policy has been decided by diktat, by the crooks and thugs who have seized power. The people of China had no voice in the decision, though they are the ones to suffer for breaking the rule (from punishments such as fines through to forced abortion and sterilization.) For that reason more than any other, the policy is illegitimate.
Yet what most interests me about China’s single-child policy is how it makes children a commodity.
One of the problems of the policy is that, in a patriarchal society like China, it leads to gender imbalance, as would-be parents abort female fetuses hoping for the subsequent conception of a male child.
Beijing’s first response to this was to ban gender screening of unborn children. Of course, in a country of cut corners like China, that was wholly ineffective. Bribe-driven, it was an easy matter for parents to find the gender of their child and order up a termination accordingly.
So Beijing’s next step was to change the rules, at least for those in the countryside, where attitudes are most traditional. The new rule said that if your first child was female (or disabled, which is much the same thing), well, bad luck, have another go and try to bring forth men-children only.
Thus the system which already valued male over female now had official blessing, a girl worth less than a boy – say, a dollar to a euro. That was the first step in the commoditization of children. A quick fix, a fudge – much easier to implement than the more ‘difficult,’ ‘radical’ solution of leading by example, of allowing women to take positions of power in Chinese society.
The next stage was akin to the periodic fine-tuning of the Federal Reserve, or the Bank of England, an ad-hoc adjustment of the children-marketplace. Thus, when there was a dip in the liquidity of the children-market – as, for example, during the recent Wenchuan earthquake which led to the death of so many thousands of children, killed due to the greed and negligence of all those layers of Chinese officials – the government’s response was to prime the market by telling bereaved parents they could have another child.
When you try to make a society through social engineering, you turn people into mere nuts and bolts.
It’s a common enough stick the West uses to beat China, the one-child policy. But for me the real problem is simply one of legitimacy. The human race is clearly expanding too fast and if, as a species, we do not control our reproduction, then there can be little hope for a fair existence for most of us. The world will simply polarize into a few haves and billions of have-nots.
In those terms, then, China is showing leadership. But it is not so, really, for the choice to limit the size of a society must be taken by that society. In the case of China, the one-child policy has been decided by diktat, by the crooks and thugs who have seized power. The people of China had no voice in the decision, though they are the ones to suffer for breaking the rule (from punishments such as fines through to forced abortion and sterilization.) For that reason more than any other, the policy is illegitimate.
Yet what most interests me about China’s single-child policy is how it makes children a commodity.
One of the problems of the policy is that, in a patriarchal society like China, it leads to gender imbalance, as would-be parents abort female fetuses hoping for the subsequent conception of a male child.
Beijing’s first response to this was to ban gender screening of unborn children. Of course, in a country of cut corners like China, that was wholly ineffective. Bribe-driven, it was an easy matter for parents to find the gender of their child and order up a termination accordingly.
So Beijing’s next step was to change the rules, at least for those in the countryside, where attitudes are most traditional. The new rule said that if your first child was female (or disabled, which is much the same thing), well, bad luck, have another go and try to bring forth men-children only.
Thus the system which already valued male over female now had official blessing, a girl worth less than a boy – say, a dollar to a euro. That was the first step in the commoditization of children. A quick fix, a fudge – much easier to implement than the more ‘difficult,’ ‘radical’ solution of leading by example, of allowing women to take positions of power in Chinese society.
The next stage was akin to the periodic fine-tuning of the Federal Reserve, or the Bank of England, an ad-hoc adjustment of the children-marketplace. Thus, when there was a dip in the liquidity of the children-market – as, for example, during the recent Wenchuan earthquake which led to the death of so many thousands of children, killed due to the greed and negligence of all those layers of Chinese officials – the government’s response was to prime the market by telling bereaved parents they could have another child.
When you try to make a society through social engineering, you turn people into mere nuts and bolts.
‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 28"These 90 million plus loners form the 2nd Army of Instability. From their university-educated ranks will come the officers, the captains, and the generals – giving leadership not in the traditional sense of the military, but offering leadership as individuals asking psychological questions.
The 2nd Army’s intellectuals are already asking the simple yet dangerous questions such as ‘Who am I?’
China’s government champions that its family planning policies have been successful, and frequently offers the fact that birth of 400 million children have been prevented as a great success story.
Seen in a different light than the one shone from Communist doctrine, these 400 million could have been family members, siblings - brothers and sisters - unborn souls who may have provided normalcy, trust, happiness, and the continuation of family blood for those 90 million who were allowed to have life.
The Glass Children may eventually take the view that their parents were tricked, fooled and finally coerced into limitations on a scale never experienced by any non-warring society. The 2nd Army, with 400 million forbidden souls in tow, will then seek justice both for their parents and the liberation of the Chinese family."
'X' for Xinjiang. 'T' for Tibet. Make the signs with your hands, your crossed forearms. Don't let the lies and spin from Beijing make you forget China's captive peoples.
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Judul: Reason Number 14 - The Glass Children
Ditulis oleh Unknown
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