China’s One-Child Policy Toll Reaches 400 Million

In answer to a question from Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a Chinese official has admitted that China’s population control program has cost 400 million lives, a number greater than that of the population of the United States.

Over the years, I have been asked many times to estimate how many
lives have been lost in China as a result of the one-child policy.
Given that the policy has been in place for 30 years, I respond, and
given that each year the government aborts between 10 to 15 million
women, the total number of unborn children whose lives have been
sacrificed is somewhere between 300 and 450 million. It is
impossible to be more precise, I add, because of the Chinese
Communist party’s penchant for secrecy about such sensitive
matters.

Now, thanks to Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a pro-life Kansas
Republican, we have shocking confirmation of these numbers from a
senior Chinese government official.

During a meeting yesterday with members of the House Budget
Committee, Congressman Huelskamp asked Gao Qiang, who served for two
years as the Party Secretary for the Ministry of Health of the
People’s Republic of China, about the country’s population
control policy.

Through an interpreter, Party Secretary Gao responded that the
population of China is 400 million less than it would have been had
the Party not adopted and enforced a one-child policy. He went
on to say that China had prevented more births than the population of
the United States, which currently stands at 312 million.

“I was shocked to hear a Chinese official admit how many people
have been lost as a result of the country’s population control
policy,” Congressman Huelskamp later remarked. “The fact that this
policy has resulted in the loss of more people than the overall
population of the United States is an eye-opening figure. Think about
the demographic consequences of this, particularly the fact that a
disproportionate number of these losses are baby girls. But, even if
this policy were to be ended today, impacts would be felt for years to
come.”

That senior Chinese Communist Party
officials continue to tout how “successful” their brutal
population control policy has been in eliminating people reveals
their absolute contempt for international standards of human rights.
After all, these numbers were achieved by forcing young women, some
in the final months of pregnancy, to have abortions, an act that was
declared by the Nuremburg Tribunals to be a crime against humanity.

But it also reveals a fundamental
disconnect with the demographic reality that they themselves have
created, namely, a rapidly aging population that is
disproportionately male. Thanks to family planning run amuck, China
is a country where unborn baby girls are selectively aborted, where
young men cannot find brides and where young women are trafficked
across borders to meet this demand.

Then
there are the economic implications.

There is an old book, written in the 1920s by an American
businessman, Carl Crook, called 400 Million Customers. He saw
China then, as many people still do today, as a huge, untapped
market.

I thought of this book when I learned that Party Secretary Gao was
bragging about having reduced China’s population growth by 400 million
over the last 30 years.

Think about China’s astonishing economic performance — its
annual GDP growth over the past three decades is close to 10% —
once the Communist Party stopped trying to control all economic
activity. Think of the tremendous work ethic of the Chinese people and
their dedication to educating their children. Think of the labor
shortages that are now cropping up across the country because of the
one-child policy, where many factories cannot recruit enough
workers.

Think on these things, and then ask yourself: Is China really
better off because its leadership has eliminated 400 million one of
the most intelligent, hard working, and entrepreneurially minded
peoples the world has ever seen?

Has the Chinese Communist Party lost its collective mind? It has
eliminated 400 million customers.

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