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By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

BEIJING, September 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On Sept. 25, 1980, the Communist Party Central Committee issued a statement saying that “in 30 years, when our current extreme population growth eases, we can then adopt a different population policy.” But while the 30th anniversary of China's coercive one-child policy came and went this past week, the Chinese government has shown no signs of easing the policy, and instead expressed its intent to continue the use of forced abortion and sterilization, with no end in sight.

Chinese state-run media quoted Li Bin, head of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, saying, “Historical change doesn’t come easily, and I, on behalf of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, extend profound gratitude to all, the people in particular, for their support of the national course.”

“We will continue the one-child policy until at least 2015,'' she said.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang echoed these remarks, saying, “We will stick to the family planning policy in the coming decades and advance the balanced development of population over the long term.”

Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute (PRI), who was the first Western social scientist to document the abuses of China’s one-child policy on the ground, told LifeSiteNews.com today that “enough is enough.”

“The policy was flawed in conception, was and is brutal in execution, and, we now learn, is to be continued for decades into the future. … It is past time to call a halt to a policy that has, by means of forced abortion and forced sterilization, eliminated 400 million people from the Chinese population.”

Mosher told LSN that when he went to China in 1980, around the time when the one-child policy was first implemented, he “saw women arrested for the ‘crime’ of being pregnant, locked up, brainwashed, and ultimately forced to have abortions.  Such crimes against humanity remain everyday occurrences in today's China.”

The 30th anniversary of the one-child policy was marked in Washington DC by a rally of pro-life activists and politicians who called for greater pressure to be put on the Chinese government over its human rights abuses.

“Unless this is marked by at least some of us, tomorrow (Saturday) will be just another day,” New Jersey Republican Representative Christopher Smith, a vocal opponent of abortion and the abuse of women, told the media. (Read his complete remarks here)

“It's 30 years of the worst violation of human rights ever,” Smith said. “I work on all human rights issues and I don't know of any policy that has hurt so many women and so many children and families than the one-child policy.”

Rep. Smith called for Obama to address the issue with Chinese leaders. “I have not seen one word about forced abortion in China come out of the president's mouth. That is numbing in its indifference,” Smith said.

Joseph Meaney, Human Life International's Director of International Coordination, strongly condemned China's decision to continue the one-child policy.

“The Chinese government is stubbornly persisting in leading their country into a demographic disaster with their population control policy,” said Meaney in a press release today.

“It is simply incomprehensible that the Chinese National Population and Family Planning Commission can seriously mean to extend this destructive policy for an unspecified number of decades into the future.”

Meaney pointed out that “China's population is currently projected to start shrinking in absolute numbers by 2026” and that the “coerced low fertility of Chinese women means that the Peoples' Republic of China is one of the fastest ageing societies in the world.”

“There are four grandparents for each only child resulting from the 'One Child Policy.' What is the Chinese government's economic plan for paying the pensions of these hundreds of millions of elderly persons?”

“One shudders to think what draconian measures will be implemented by the Chinese government once it becomes fully apparent that they cannot financially support the millions of disabled and elderly persons who are no longer seen as contributing to society. Coercive euthanasia cannot be far behind their renewed commitment to coercive abortion and birth control.”

According to government statistics, the one-child policy has prevented 400 million births since the restrictions were first introduced into the country. This has resulted in a worker to retiree ratio of 10 to 1 in 1999 dropping to an expected 3 to 1 in 2050.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported earlier this year that the policy that mandates abortion for many pregnancies, combined with sex-selection and a cultural preference for boys, has created a gender imbalance that will result in 24 million men who cannot find wives by 2020.

The Academy study said that the national ratio stands at about 119 males to 100 females, and the gap expands to as much as 130 males to 100 females in some provinces.

Researcher Wang Guangzhou was quoted by the Global Times newspaper saying, “The chance of getting married will be rare if a man is more than 40-years-old in the countryside. They will be more dependent on social security as they age and have fewer household resources to rely on.”

Mosher said that the decision to extend the policy “makes no demographic or economic sense.”

“China's population growth has already stalled, the population is aging rapidly, and there is a massive gender imbalance as little girls are being eliminated by sex-selection abortion and infanticide. In other words, the one-child policy is driving China over a demographic cliff.”

See related LSN articles:

China Admits Massive Gender Imbalance from One Child Policy
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jan/10011104.html

Shanghai Starts Backpedaling One-Child Policy in Face of Demographic Implosion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072411.html

China's One-Child Policy to Cripple Chinese Economy
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/feb/04021806.html

China's One-Child Policy Burdens Younger Generation
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07082707.html