BEIJING, July 27, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – U.S. government officials and activists in the pro-life movement reported last fall that the China’s one-child policy had resulted in 400 million human beings not being born. Now, they are receiving confirmation from within the nation itself.
Earlier this month, China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission posted the figure of 400 million on its website, reports the New York Times.
Last October, the Chinese government organ the People’s Daily stated the one-child policy “has prevented 400 million births, and delayed the ‘Day of 7 Billion’ for five years.” However, it admitted, as a result, “the traditional function of the family is weakening…families composed only of elderly people and single-child families are accounting for larger proportions.”
The population control measures, which sometimes force women into multiple abortions against their will, have become front and center with the release of human rights Chen Guangcheng and, most recently, the leaked picture of would-be mother Feng Jianmei lying next to her forcibly aborted child.
“Four hundred million lives lost like Jianmei’s baby,” ChinaAid Founder and President Bob Fu remarked in an interview with the Baptist Press. “Even as recently as this week we learned more stories, like one mother lost her baby because of a forced abortion two days before her due date…This has been going on 30 years, and there are more brutal stories other than what Feng Jianmei had experienced.”
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Critics say the policy is not only inhumane, it is economically self-defeating, since an aging population will lead to a massive labor shortage, likely ending China’s phenomenal economic growth.
The People’s Daily stated that the government hopes to “maintain its total fertility rate at around 1.8.” However, China’s current birthrate is 1.55, down from 1.6 in 2010.
Wang Feng, Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, has estimated by 2050 one quarter of all Chinese will be elderly, with half the population over the age of 50.
Ge Yanfeng, Yu Dong and Zhang Bingzi of the Development Research Center of the State Council have called for the introduction of a two-child policy “as soon as possible.”
But Bob Fu, a Christian, believes national policy goals are not a sufficient motive.
“I think the Chinese people need to wake up and to fight for basic dignity of life,” he said. “We also need to, as Americans, we need to urge our elected government officials to stop sending this funding to the UN, the (United Nations Population Fund), so that more lives can be rescued.”