China’s one-child policy was enacted in 1980 and initially seemed like a logical policy to slow the population growth in China. By limiting population growth, China’s government hoped to reduce resource demands as well as economic and environmental problems. Families in China were allowed to have only one child and were penalized for exceeding this limit.

Fines were imposed on families who choose to have more than one child. For each child following the first, families were forced to pay a “social maintenance” fine/fee if they wanted the child to be integrated into society and have the same rights as other children. It has been estimated that the Chinese government has collected over 2 trillion yuan in fees since 1980. These fines were mild penalizations compared to the following actions that were taken to enforce the one-child policy.

Many women were forced to receive abortions by “local family-planning officials.” “The baby was killed while still in the womb by an injection arranged by local family-planning officials. They restrained Ms. Feng, who was seven months pregnant, and then induced her to give birth to the dead baby.” This incident is not unique, similar incidents have been reported by many people across China. In 1983, 14 million women had abortions organized by these same family-planning committees and in 2009, there were 6 million women who underwent abortions.

Another way the one-child policy was enforced was through the sterilization of women. In some cases, violators of the one-child policy were forced into sterilization. In addition, these sterilizations were not performed by professionals, but by people who lacked adequate training. These procedures performed by amateurs often left women with many health problems and often destroyed their health.

Another side effect that came from this policy was that boys were the more desired gender of children. Boys were considered more valuable because it was thought that they would be better able to support the parents financially when their age increased. This resulted in an increase in the abortion of female children.

Aside from the obvious mistreatment of women, the one-child policy has had other detrimental effects on the culture in China. The effects of this policy are very visible today; the number of men in China heavily outweighs the number of women in China. China now has about 30 million more men than women; this means 30 million men who cannot find brides.

“The shortage of women may have increased mental health problems and socially disruptive behavior among men and has left some men unable to marry and have a family. The scarcity of females has resulted in kidnapping and trafficking of women for marriage and increased numbers of commercial sex workers, with a potential resultant rise in human immunodeficiency virus infection and other sexually transmitted diseases.

In October of 2015, China official ended the one-child policy. However, it seems as though the damage to the Chinese social structure has already been done. Hopefully, the Chinese social structure is able to recover and the world can learn from this disastrous policy and not implement such policies in the future.