• Baby crushed by car containing China one-child policy team

    By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News

    BEIJING – A 13-month-old child was fatally crushed by a car containing Chinese officials after they went to collect a fine from the parents for breaching the country’s one-child policy, according to Chinese state media.

    The incident reportedly occurred Monday in Dongshantou village near Wenzhou city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, after a delegation of 11 officials from the Ruian Town birth control office drove out to get the unspecified fine.

    This did not go down well with the father, Chen Liandi, 39, and the conversation got heated.

    According to a briefing given by the Ruian Municipal Propaganda Department and reported by state media, the officials convinced Chen’s wife, Li Yuhong, to accompany them back to Ruian to talk over the couple’s options.

    The baby was reportedly left in the hands of his father and the group got back into their cars to leave.

    What happened next remains unclear – perhaps due to the politically sensitive nature of this story – but the boy was then found crushed underneath a car.      

    He was rushed to the Third People’s Hospital in Ruian, but could not be saved.

    'You were too careless'
    On China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, users expressed frustration over the vague account given by Ruian officials and demanded more information, but no other Chinese press have printed much beyond the official government account.

    For many in China, the story brings back uncomfortable memories of Feng Jiemei, who last June posted gruesome photographs of her lying in a hospital bed next to her 7-month-old aborted fetus.

    Feng’s story created a social firestorm for Beijing when word got out that the 22-year-old mother had been forced to have the abortion because she did not have enough money to pay the $6,400 fine for having a second child.

    “I told you, $6,400, not even a penny less. I told your dad that and he said he has no money,” a family planning official wrote to Deng in a blunt text message that quickly went viral. “You were too careless, you didn’t think this was a big deal.”

    Feng was grabbed from her home and taken to a local hospital in her native Shaanxi province where she was blindfolded, thrown on a bed and forced to a sign a document she couldn’t read. Thirty hours later, her baby girl was aborted.

    China has long defended its one-child policy as a way to prevent overpopulation and to help raise living standards across the country.

    However, some experts in China and abroad argue that the policy has outlived its usefulness and may instead be a detriment to future growth.

    Others in China have pointed out the abuses meted out in cases like Feng Jiemei’s show that it causes more social harm and have called on Beijing to remove it.

    However Beijing just last month reaffirmed its support for the policy.

    NBC News’ Le Li contributed to this report.

    Related:

    China: One-child policy is here to stay

    Growing calls in China to change the one-child policy

    Not Chinese enough in China? Americans' dilemma

  • Chinese say one child is enough as Beijing weighs end of policy

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING – Liu Jie remembers clearly when her mother violated China's one-child policy and gave birth to her little brother. The family was living in Hunan province, where her mother worked as a teacher, and the illegal addition to the family cost her mother the job.

    Now 23 and working as a secretary in Beijing, Liu fully supports doing away with the country's controversial one-child policy – an argument that has been gaining ground thanks to China's increasingly grim population trends.

    In a report released this week, the China Development Research Foundation, a high-level government think tank, recommended that a two-child policy be instituted in some provinces this year and a nationwide two-child policy be made law in 2015, with all birth limits eliminated by 2020.

    Chinese government think tank urges end to unpopular one-child policy

    "It's a great idea," Liu said. "It will help to solve some social problems, cultivate children's character and improve the treatment of the elderly."

    But when asked if she would want to have more than one child, Liu quickly responded, "Oh no, I will only have one baby!"

    "Raising children isn't easy and I don't think I'll have enough money for two children… if I have two, my quality of life would be worse," Liu said.


    Hers is a dilemma confronting many Chinese: even if the government repeals the unpopular policy in order to address an approaching demographic time bomb, there are serious questions about whether Chinese families would even be willing to have more than one child in today's economic and social climate.

    The one-child policy has been credited with reducing China's population from anywhere between 100 to 400 million people since its passing in 1979 under then-leader Deng Xiaoping.

    At the same time, a gradual increase in life expectancy on the mainland has created a significant age imbalance waiting to play out: China's population over the age of 60 is expected to more than double from 185 million today to 487 million in 2053, or 35 percent of the population.

    Meanwhile, the 52 percent of the population that will be of working age by then will be expected to support this swollen elderly group as well as the 16 percent of the population that will be children, raising serious questions on how the country will be able to sustain growth.

    Gruesome photos put spotlight on China's one-child policy

    These issues are unlike anything China has faced its thousands of years of history, said Gu Baochang, a professor at Beijing's Renmin University.

    "China has no experience, no understanding, and no preparation for dealing with the new challenges posed by extremely low fertility, serious aging, speeding urbanization and wide spread of population," Gu warned.

    Thinking twice
    Amongst China's young population – the group that will be expected to carry this tremendous financial burden – there is general support for the elimination of the draconian policy they grew up with. But it doesn't mean that they are any more willing to have more children.

    With soaring inflation on everyday goods and astronomical home prices in many of China's cities, everyday Chinese are taking a closer look at the daunting costs of child-rearing and other modern societal pressures and are thinking twice about having another child.

    For Gong Leilei, a 32-year-old from Zhejiang, it's simply a question of money. Gong and his wife want a little sister for their six-year old son but have been reluctant to try.

    "I wanted to have a daughter, but my wife does not want her now," Gong said. "She thinks we should wait until we have more money."

    Joyce Li, a 38-year old program director at Beijing University, agreed that it's time for the one-child policy to go. "Right now the one-child policy has a lot of problems like the issue of taking care of the elderly… so it's necessary to change the one-child policy," Li said.

    Read more China coverage on NBC's Behind The Wall

    Still, when asked whether she would have two children, she balked. "Right now raising a child in China is very expensive, so I don't think I have enough money for many children," she said.

    "There are also other problems, like the issue of education," Li continued, "Right now it is very hard to get children into school."

    The growing number of migrants moving into China's cities concerns some. Chen Chi, a 22-year old university student in Beijing, said he actually supported the one-child policy and worried about the burdens of a growing population.

    "No, it's not a good idea to remove the one-child policy," Chen told NBC News. "The population is too high and more and more people will move to urban areas to have children, making the urban-rural population balance even worse."

    As for children: "I will only have one baby," he said. "It is an economic decision."

    New leadership, new policy?
    Despite all the hubbub about the report calling for the end of the one-child policy, the odds are deeply stacked against any rapid movement in the direction of an easing of the law. China's ruling Communist Party today is heavily consensus-driven and the report released this week will likely be mediated on for some time before the Party's legislative gears begin moving.

    That the report was issued and publicized in local Chinese media at all, however, suggests that Beijing is receptive to the idea of discussing the policy's abolition. Ultimately, if party leaders believe that removing the one-child policy is in the best interest of maintaining social stability, then change will likely be seen under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the man expected to take power in China next week.

    Read more World news on NBCNews.com

    But in an email interview with NBC News, Mayling Birney, a scholar at the London School of Economics, warned that while a two-child policy may align now with party priorities, that doesn't mean that there won't be complications that give leaders pause.

    "People may be relieved that the government is relaxing its invasive family planning policy; they may be less likely to encounter tragic stories of coerced abortions; and the worrisome gender imbalance should improve," Birney said.

    "At the same time, more births would create new demands and strain on the education and health systems, well before the new generation could make its contributions to future economic growth," she warned.

    NBC News Le Li, Johanna Armstrong, Yanzhou Liu and Eric Baculinao contributed to this report.

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  • Chinese government think tank urges end to unpopular one-child policy

    Andy Wong / AP

    Chinese families bring their babies to the Ritan Park in Beijing Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. A government think tank says China should start phasing out its one-child policy immediately and allow two children for every family by 2015. It remains unclear whether Chinese leaders are ready to take that step.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    BEIJING -- A Chinese government think tank is urging the country's leaders to start phasing out its unpopular one-child policy immediately and allow two children for every family in the country by 2015.

    Some demographers saw the timeline put forward by the China Development Research Foundation, which is close to the central leadership, as a bold move. Others warned that the gradual approach, if implemented, would be insufficient to help correct the problems that China's strict birth limits have created.

    Xie Meng, a press officer with the foundation, said the final version of its report would be released "in a week or two," but Chinese state media were given advance copies.

    The official Xinhua News Agency said the foundation was recommending a two-child policy in some provinces from this year and a nationwide two-child policy by 2015. It also proposed all birth limits be dropped by 2020.

    "China has paid a huge political and social cost for the policy, as it has resulted in social conflict, high administrative costs and led indirectly to a long-term gender imbalance at birth," Xinhua said, citing the report.

    The foundation's press officer told NBC News that the report was "the result of two years of effort." 

    "China's demographic changes were analyzed in connection with seven areas," she said, citing the challenges of aging, unemployment, child and women's welfare, urbanization, education, health and family planning.

    But it remains unclear whether Chinese leaders are ready to take up the recommendations. China's National Population and Family Planning Commission had no immediate comment on the report Wednesday.

    'Change is inevitable'
    While they are known to many as the one-child policy, the actual rules are more complicated. The government limits most urban couples to one child, and allows two children for rural families if their first-born is a girl. There are numerous other exceptions as well, including looser rules for minority families and a two-child limit for parents who are themselves both singletons.

    Cai Yong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said the report carries extra weight because the think tank is under the State Council, China's Cabinet. He said he found it remarkable that state-backed demographers were willing to publicly propose such a detailed schedule and plan on how to get rid of China's birth limits.

    Gruesome photos put spotlight on China's one-child policy

    "That tells us at least that policy change is inevitable, it's coming," said Cai, who was not involved in the drafting of the report, but knows many of the experts who were. Cai is currently a visiting scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai. "It's coming, but we cannot predict when exactly it will come."


    Adding to the uncertainty is a once-in-a-decade leadership transition that kicks off Nov. 8 that will see a new slate of top leaders installed by next spring.

    Cai said the transition could keep population reform on the back burner or changes might be rushed through to help burnish the reputations of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao on their way out.

    There has been growing speculation among Chinese media, experts and ordinary people about whether the government will relax the one-child policy — introduced in 1980 as a temporary measure to curb surging population growth — and allow more people to have two children.

    Though the government credits the policy with preventing hundreds of millions of births and helping lift countless families out of poverty, it is reviled by many ordinary people. The strict limits have led to forced abortions and sterilizations, even though such measures are illegal. Couples who flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.

    Read more international stories on NBCNews.com

    Many demographers argue that the policy has worsened the country's aging crisis by limiting the size of the young labor pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires. They also say it has contributed to the imbalanced sex ratio as some families abort baby girls, preferring to try for a male heir.

    The government has recognized those problems and has tried to address them by boosting social services for the elderly. It has also banned sex-selective abortion and rewarded rural families whose only child is a girl.

    Outdated or engine of growth?
    Many today also see the birth limits as outdated, a relic of the era when housing, jobs and food were provided by the state.

    "It has been 30 years since our planned economy was liberalized," commented Wang Yi, the owner of a shop that sells textiles online, under a news report about the foundation's proposal. "So why do we still have to plan our population?"

    Ren Hao, a Chinese journalist who recently married, told NBC that he welcomed the proposed policy change but suggested that it be accompanied by new measures in education, health care and economy in order to succeed.

    Read more China coverage on NBC's Behind The Wall

    "Raising a child is quite a burden nowadays so, in the end, it's up to the couples to decide whether they want to have one child or more based on their conditions," he said.

    Ji Jianming, a Beijing construction project manager, argued in favor of the policy. "The one-child policy was good," he said. "It allowed China to develop rapidly and improve people's lives faster."

    Though open debate about the policy has flourished in state media and on the Internet, leaders have so far expressed a desire to maintain the status quo.

    President Hu said last year that China would keep its strict family planning policy to keep the birth rate low and other officials have said that no changes are expected until at least 2015.

    Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an expert on China's demographics, contributed research material to the foundation's report, but has yet to see the full text. He said he welcomed the gist of the document that he's seen in state media.

    It says the government "should return the rights of reproduction to the people," he said. "That's very bold."

    But Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Beijing's Renmin University and a vocal advocate of reform, said the proposed timeline wasn't aggressive enough.

    "They should have reformed this policy ages ago," he said. "It just keeps getting held up, delayed."

    NBC News' Eric Baculinao and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • As she nears death, woman who saved 30 babies from trash is hailed in China

    EuroPics[CEN]

    Lou Xiaoying, right, lies in the hospital with one of her daughters, center. Lou, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned babies from the streets of Jinhua, in eastern Zhejiang province, China, where she made a living recycling rubbish.

    By Tianzhou Ye, NBC News

    BEIJING – “What?! No, she is alive in the hospital,” exclaimed Zhang Jingjing through the phone lines.

    Zhang was responding to concern on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like service, claiming that Lou Xiaoying, her adoptive mother, had died.

    The worry was understandable, for Lou, 88, has been hailed a hero in China for reportedly saving more than 30 abandoned babies from trash cans and dumps over the past four decades.

    Lou is suffering from kidney disease in the hospital, but, according to her daughter, she's still alive.

    "My mother has gotten better,” Zhang, 33, reported. “The hospital has spared us much expense. They have also minimized the kinds of medicines that my mom has to use. Money collected from donations has helped us a lot, too."

    Helping others
    Lou, who was born in 1924 in Fujian Province, collected and recycled garbage to make a living. She and her husband, who died 17 years ago, had two biological children, a daughter and a son. 

    Over the years of scavenging, Lou found 30 children who had been abandoned, mostly as a result of China’s strict one-child policy. She and her husband adopted three daughters while the remaining children, mostly girls, were passed to other people to start new lives.


    According to an article in Britain’s Daily Mail, Lou found her first abandoned child, a girl, when she was out collecting garbage in 1972. 

    “She was just lying amongst the junk on the street, abandoned. She would have died had we not rescued her and taken her in,” she said, according to the Daily Mail report. “I realized if we had strength enough to collect garbage, how could we not recycle something as important as human lives?”

    “These children need love and care. They are all precious human lives,” she added. “I do not understand how people can leave such a vulnerable baby on the streets.”

    Zhang told NBC News that "at one point, there were 12 members in the family” living in a deserted temple on the outskirts of the city of Jinhua, about 200 miles south of Shanghai. "It wasn't until 1987 when they were building a railway and wanted to remove our temple, did [authorities] find out about our family,” she added.

    The family’s future was complicated by the rigid household registration system designed to control the movement of China’s 1.3 billion people. Known in Chinese as hukou, the central government classifies people as either city dwellers or rural peasants, which determines not only a citizen’s residence but also what kind of social services and schools they are eligible for.

    Because they were living “off the grid,” none of Lou’s adopted children had a hukou. But Zhang said that people in the area soon heard about the family and help came along.

    "There were some communal donations which helped two of us adopted ones go to school. But my oldest adopted sister, who is now 40, has never gone to school,” said Zhang.  

    Even in old age, Lou kept going out to collect trash several times a day. In 2007, Lou discovered a boy, Zhang Qilin, in a dumpster. She adopted the boy, who is now 7, as her grandson; his adoptive father is Lou’s biological son. 

    The youngster encountered the same problem of not having a hukou. But after a series of reports about Lou in the local Jinhua Daily, followed by other reports in the Chinese and international press, Zhang was granted permission to attend a public school called Jindong District Experimental School in Jinhua. In addition, his hukou registration process is now under way.   

    ‘Grandma Lou deserves her dreams to be fulfilled’
    Fang Qing, the principal of the public school, spoke with NBC News about Lou’s youngest adoptee.

    “I take for granted that every child in China has a right to education, no matter what his background is like,” Fang said, adding that the school would keep a special eye on Zhang Qilin.

    “Grandma Lou deserves her dreams to be fulfilled. Good people should be rewarded with good,” Fang said.

    Many netizens have chimed in on Weibo about Lou’s heroism.

    “What would the world be like if only we have a few more people like Grandma Lou. I respect you, Grandma,” wrote one user.

    Lou’s concern for others lives on in her daughter, Zhang, who agreed to be interviewed as long as no foreign donation appeal would be made through NBC.

    “We are not in a very positive position financially,” she said, “but neither do we lack money now for my mother’s medical treatments. … We are very grateful, but we are doing fine now.”

    Asked if she has ever thought about finding her biological parents, Zhang answered “No” resolutely. “She has always been my mother.”

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  • Gruesome photos put spotlight on China's one-child policy

    Family photo

    Photos of Feng Jianmei on her hospital bed after a forced abortion have been circulating on the web. The photos were taken by her sister who in turn contacted the media about the story. The photos originally appeared in a local newspaper report online and then they were picked by netizens and distributed online.

    By Bo Gu, NBC News

    Updated at 10:33 p.m. ET: China state media says city officials have apologized to Feng Jiamei and suspended three officials, the BBC reported.

    Xinhua news said the Ankang city government will urge the county government to review its family planning operations, according to the BBC report.

    BEIJING – Feng Jianmei  says she was manhandled by seven people, some of them local family planning officials, some of whom she didn’t know. 

    Feng, 22 years old and seven months pregnant, was dragged out of her relative’s home, carried and shoved into a van that headed straight to a hospital on June 2, she told NBC News in phone interview.

    She was blindfolded, thrown on a bed, and forced to sign a document that she couldn’t read with the blindfold still on her eyes. Then two shots were injected into her belly. Thirty hours later, on the morning June 4, she gave birth to a dead baby girl.

    Feng is one of the many Chinese women who have been forced to have abortions under China’s strict one-child-only policy started in late 1970s to contain the country’s fast growing population, which has now topped 1.3 billion people.

    One-child policy
    China’s long time Communist leader Chairman Mao Zedong originally encouraged women to have as many children as possible during the Cold War-era when human power was believed to be an important force if war broke out. But the country’s rulers soon found it too difficult to feed the huge population – so they adopted a harsh policy that allows urban citizens to have only one child, and rural couples to have two, if the first child is a girl.  

    The policy has been carried out for more than three decades despite public opposition, from human rights activists to ordinary people. Thousands of years of Chinese culture fostered the belief that “more children is more blessing,” especially in remote and rural areas where the elderly lack adequate social benefits and depend on children as they grow old.

    Government family planning officials are also under pressure to make sure their constituencies follow the quota of babies allowed. When there’s no clear law telling them what they can and cannot do, forced abortions, often on late-terms pregnancies, have become the norm, particularly for the poor who are unable to pay the hefty fines to have additional children.   

    Advocates on behalf of these women are usually ignored or face government repression. For example, Chen Guangcheng, the famous blind lawyer and human rights activist, represented victims of family planning abuse in Shandong Province. Chen was jailed for four years for his advocacy and put under house arrest until he recently escaped illegal detainment and fled to the U.S. last month.

    More on Chen Guangcheng

    There are no official figures of how many women in China unwillingly terminate pregnancies every year. “All Girls Allowed,” an organized founded by former 1989 student protest leader Chai Ling, claims there are 1.3 million forced abortions annually. 

    ‘How can I agree to do that, as a mother?’
    Feng Jianmei didn’t realize she wasn’t allowed to have a second child (her first daughter was born in 2007) since everyone else around her was permitted to have a second child. Both she and her husband Deng Jiyuan took for granted that they would have the same right.  But the family planning office in Zengjiazhen, a small town in Shaanxi province in the heart of China, thought differently.  

    Through a rigorous and rigid household registration system designed to control population movement, the central government classifies all its citizens as either city dwellers or rural peasants.  The registration, also known in Chinese as hukou, determines not only a citizen’s residence but also what kind of social services individuals are eligible for.

    It is very difficult to change one’s hukou although there are many ways, including marrying a person with a different registration status, applying for a new status through one’s job, or paying an enormous sum of money. 

    The local family planning office decided that Feng wasn’t allowed to have a second child because she didn’t have the necessary permit – apparently she had failed to relocate her hukou to Zengjiazhen when she moved from her original province of Inner Mongolia.

    But the couple says they had no idea their plan to have a second child was connected with Feng’s hukou.

    They were given another option that would solve the problem: pay a fine of $6,400. But that was an impossible amount for the couple to afford – Deng is a migrant worker and Feng is a farmer. 

    “I told you, $6,400, not even a penny less. I told your dad that and he said he has no money,” the family planning official wrote to Deng in a text message that has been made public. “You were too careless, you didn’t think this was a big deal.”

    Feng’s sister received the same warning;  if they couldn’t afford to help pay the fine, it was only a matter of time before her sister had to get rid of the baby, whether she wanted to or not.

    Things came to a head on June 2, but according to the local government, Feng agreed to the abortion.

    The Zhenping Population and Family Planning Bureau released on June 11 an official stamped document, which says  that “after government cadre’s repeated persuasion, Feng Jianmei agreed to have an abortion at 15:40 on June 2.” 

    “No, I didn’t agree to do it,” Feng told NBC News. “How can I agree to do that, as a mother?”

    She sobbed when asked what happened next, and said she was too upset to think about it. She said all those officials who kidnapped her disappeared after the abortion, and she’s still suffering from a constant headache.

    Two appalling photos of her were taken and posted online that show her lying in bed, looking weak and helpless, with a dead and bloody baby next to her. The photos were taken by her sister who in turn contacted the media about the story. The photos originally appeared in a local newspaper report online and then they were picked by netizens and distributed online.

    ‘If this evil policy is not stopped, this country will have no humanity’
    Forced abortions in China are not new, but Feng’s story spread rapidly via social media, and outrage was immediate and unanimous. On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging site, netizens left thousands of angry comments, although many of the posts were quickly deleted by government censors.   

    “The purpose of family planning was to control population, but now it has become murder population,” wrote Li Chengpeng, a well-known Chinese writer. “It was a method to contain population, but now it is a way to make money. When you can make money by killing, what else are you afraid to do? A seven-month baby can think already. I want to ask the murderer, how do you face your own mother when you go home? If this evil policy is not stopped, this country will have no humanity.”

    Zhao Chu, another writer, called it pure murder. “This is not about enforcing the policy, it is about depriving someone’s right to live. We avoid the nature of it by using a medical word ‘enforced abortion.’ For so long family planning seems like something completely irrelevant of human life. It’s like coal mining or digging mushrooms. Human life has become lifeless indexes, some cold, meaningless numbers.

    “Also, pushed by heavy fines, the controversial policy has become profit-oriented activities that everyone hates. The worst victims are those of low-class rural people who have no power to fight. Their tears and cries are not heard by so called mainstream society and the victims become worse than the untouchables,” said Zhao.

    Many called for the one-child policy to be outlawed. “We feel so sorry for the dead baby girl, we criticize those so-called law enforcers. But we should rethink the 30-year-long family planning policy. It’d be worth it if this could help to change the policy! We keep our eyes open!” commented user A-Kun on his Weibo page.

    Even Hu Xijin, chief editor of Global Times, one of China’s most pro-government newspapers, criticized the forced abortion on his Weibo account.

    “I strongly oppose the barbarous forced abortion to this 7-month-pregnant mother. Time has changed and the intensity of enforcing family planning has changed. We should promote civilized family planning,” Hu wrote.

    But he added that he didn’t think the whole policy should be abolished. “Don’t use Hong Kong and Japan as an argument to deny China’s population policy. Those places are small and developed early, fed by the whole world’s resources. But the world resources cannot afford to feed a China with billions of people.”

    ‘This has damaged the image of family planning work’
    NBC News tried to contact both town and city level family planning offices in Zengjiazhen and Ankang, but the calls went unanswered.  

    A report from Xinhua, China’s official government news agency, released on Thursday said that the Shaanxi Provincial Family Planning Committee has sent an investigation team to Zengjiazhen and requested local government to have the responsible parties held accountable.


    “This has damaged the image of family planning work, and had an adverse effect on the society. The committee will resolutely prevent such things from happening again,” the Xinhua news report said.

    Feng’s conversation with NBC News was interrupted three times by what she said were government cadres entering her hospital ward to talk.

    When asked what she would do next or whether they will seek legal help, she uttered an answer in a very low voice: “I have no idea.” 

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