The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week.
State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children.
The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive.
Photo: Reuters
“Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform.
China’s near-universal mandate of just one child per couple from 1980 through 2015 prompted local officials to compel women to undergo abortions and sterilizations.
Beijing launched the one-child policy because leaders worried about population growth potentially spiraling out of control.
However, China’s population, long the world’s highest, later slowed and last year tumbled for the third year in a row.
“If the one-child policy had been implemented for 10 years less, China’s population would not have plummeted like this!” a Sina Weibo post said.
After falling behind India in 2023, China’s population declined last year to 1.39 billion. Experts warn the downtrend would accelerate in coming years. Data for this year is to be released next month.
As population czar, Peng focused her commission’s work on the countryside.
In rural China, large families were once seen as a goal for couples looking to ensure that they would be taken care of in their old age. Sons who could carry on the family name were also favored, leading to unwanted infant girls and even aborted female fetuses.
“Those children, if they were born, would be almost 40 years old, in the prime of their lives,” one person posted on Sina Weibo.
By the 2010s, Peng had publicly shifted her views, saying that the one-child policy should be eased. Now Beijing is trying to boost the flagging birthrate with childcare subsidies, longer maternity leave and tax benefits.
The shrinking and graying of the population has spurred worries that the world’s second-biggest economy would struggle as the number of workers declines.
Rising costs from elderly care and retirement benefits would also likely create additional budgetary strains for already indebted local governments.
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