The Detroit pianist,
Tommy Flanagan, the man on the keys behind Sonny Rollins' “Saxophone Colossus”
and John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” is playing all by himself this morning, sadly
elegant, heartbroken, “How Long Has This Been Going On?” asks the song . . .
Front-page news replies that China’s been at it for about
thirty-four years. The One Child Policy
that is. The New York Times is telling
me that China will finally be easing off the broad social-engineering project, among
significant other reforms announced yesterday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
I thought about my wife who had my stepson during her first marriage. Unlikely we would have met if she’d had a second and a third and a fourth child. Unintended perhaps, it certainly meant that hundreds of millions of women, were freed from decades of otherwise requisite birthing. Perhaps I personally, should be grateful for this remarkable, authoritarian equalizer among a fifth of humanity.
I thought about my wife who had my stepson during her first marriage. Unlikely we would have met if she’d had a second and a third and a fourth child. Unintended perhaps, it certainly meant that hundreds of millions of women, were freed from decades of otherwise requisite birthing. Perhaps I personally, should be grateful for this remarkable, authoritarian equalizer among a fifth of humanity.
China then, is now on the tale end of this strange three and
a half decade experiment. Thinking back,
to a time when it wasn’t a fait accompli
it is almost impossible to imagine a government could conceive, let alone hope
to enforce such a policy. I balk at the
notion that the Chinese government should take away my Sunday from time to time
as they manipulate holiday schedules. Who
is going to complain about a lowly Sunday when such a thoroughgoing curtailment
of human behavior is enforced among so many people, for so long?
I can recall a conversation with an Australian graduate
student whom I met twenty years ago, at the East China Normal University where
I was living in Shangahi.
One of the things he said always stuck with me. He tried to profile China as a profoundly
modern place. And this was ironic on the
surface because at that time, Shanghai didn’t have any elevated highways, no
subways, not a single café, and Pudong was an uninspiring collection of
warehouses and fields. What do you mean
“modern?”
Rather, he was considering the systemic implementation of
ideology on this enormous population.
The Maoist efforts to “rip up” traditional beliefs like Confucianism,
Daoism, Buddhism and replace them with a hybrid foreign and domestically
adapted ideology. What other non-western
society went through such a thoroughgoing effort to fashion a collective “modern”
consciousness, purposefully severing traditional antecedents? Think of how completely different India and
her circumstances are, as a result. Vietnam? Cambodia?
Surely, though the gestation of the revolutionary period was not nearly as
long as China. North Korea? Most assuredly that nation is, by this benchmark, profoundly ‘modern."
Comparatively modern concepts like psychology, and sociology
were widely used by the CCP to buttress and explain human behavior. Propaganda was and is systemically used to
fashion proper attitudes among citizens.
Mandatory sacrifice, radical egalitarianism, to fashion a socialist
future. Then, shortly after the
completely disruptive “modernization” of the Cultural Revolution a new mandatory
collective sacrifice for everyone, restricting all Han Chinese couples to one
child. The touch of the state and its
will fashioning so deeply the behavior and the consciousness of every citizen.
Of course, like so many state policy rollouts of any
government, this was begun with the best of intentions. China was poor and there weren’t enough
resources to go around. Chinese leaders
understood it as their responsibility to architect a new nation, by whatever
means necessary and they set about to, in their view, “save” the population
from itself. Not unlike Cultural
Revolution efforts to ‘storm the barricades’ and take on the most precious
fundaments of Chinese civilization, like respect for teachers or elders, the
One Child Policy confronted core Chinese notions about procreation, male heirs,
and a family line. These could no longer be a Chinese birth right. I’m sure there
are many notable exceptions, but that in general every Han Chinese, including
certainly all Party members, were subject to this collective sacrifice on this
matter, is also oddly modern, ennobling and self perpetuating.
The policy then had countless unforeseen side effects, among
which were my being able to meet my wife.
At a macro-level the policy has created a demographic time bomb, with
the nation’s vast population becoming old, before it becomes rich. There will need to be a new policy socially
engineered no doubt with new good intentions, to mandate care for the vast aging
population. This too rather daunting,
like so many other Chinese-size state challenges, considered at the outset.
Like many, I wonder about these four decades worth of only
children and what it means for collective consciousness. As it concerns this individual or that, being
raised as an only-child is a perfectly reasonable alternative maturation path
to life with siblings. But for an entire
nation? Hundreds of millions of only-children wrought as a collective default.
Does that mean a nation of people who are on the average more selfish,
less able to share, less inclined to negotiate?
Or in fact does it mean more people are recipients of comparatively more
love, engagement, and wealth? 望子成龙[1] Regardless,
the hand of the state has through this policy, fundamentally altered what it
means to be Chinese.
I often wonder about my two daughters attending a Chinese
school of only children. Are the other children envious? Do they find it exotic that someone has a
“sister?” Not every squad of siblings
gets along, but mine do. I know they
derive power and identity in juxtaposition to one another, in concert with one
another. They certainly have lots of
nice friends. Behaviors can be spoiled
and selfish just as easily as they can be bright or caring. Those kids will now, it seems be the tail end
of that remarkable experiment. Perhaps
some of their parents saw the same news I did this morning and considered anew whether
or not it was too late, to have a second.
So we have a thirty-four year block of humanity, many
hundreds of millions of people who are moving now into positions of
responsibility. Within a decade they
will become key decision makers. This
China of only children, this willful, collective experiment, will shortly
inherit the responsibility to orchestrate China’ engagement with the world,
for the first time in over 160 years, as a civilization leading the world’s
modernity.
With the state’s release of the grip, a new 'sibling-generation' will presently commence. Queue the Gershwin brothers: and all the little only-child-princes and only-child-princesses can sing:
Oh, you said you
was never intending
To break up our
scene this way
But there ain't
any use in pretending
It could happen to
us any day
[1] wàngzǐchénglóng: lit. to hope one's son becomes a dragon
(idiom); fig. to long for one' s child to succeed in life / to have great hopes
for one's offspring / to give one's child the best education as a career investment
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