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... salary of the parents. In Zhejiang province, violators are assessed a fine of 20 percent of the parents's alary paid over 5 years. According to new Guizhou provincial family planning regulations published in July, families who exceed birth quotas are to be fined two to five times the per capita annual income of residents of their local area. The regulations also stipulate that government employees in Guizhou who have too many children face the loss of their jobs. In many provinces, penalties for excess births in an area also can be levied against local officials and the mother's work unit, thus creating multiple sources of pressure.
In Guizhou, for example, regulations state that officials in an area in which birth targets are not met cannot be promoted in that year. Unpaid fines sometimes have resulted in confiscation or destruction of homes and personal property by local authorities. Government policy prohibits the use of force to compel persons to submit to abortion or sterilization. However, intense pressure to meet family planning targets set by the Government has resulted in documented instances where family planning officials have used coercion, including forced abortion and sterilization, to meet government goals.
During an unauthorized pregnancy, a woman often is paid multiple visits by family planning workers and pressured to terminate the pregnancy. In June a former Fujian province local family planning official stated that local authorities in a Fujian town systematically used coercive measures such as forced abortion and sterilization, detention, and the destruction of property to enforce birth quotas. After the Fujian allegations were made public, the SFPC sent a team led by a senior official to investigate the charges. In a meeting with foreign diplomats, the senior official did not deny that abuses may have occurred, but insisted that coercion was not the norm, or government policy, nor sanctioned by central authorities in Beijing.
For the first time, the Government provided information on cases of local officials who had been punished for carrying out coercive family planning measures. SFPC Vice Minister Li Honggui said in June that local officials have been punished for using coercion and that the Government "made it a principle to ban coercion at any level. " In October a senior family planning official again acknowledged that problems persist and reaffirmed the central Government's determination to address such problems. The official said that the SFPC had issued circulars nationwide prohibiting family planning officials from coercing women to undergo abortions or sterilization against their will. Under the State Compensation Law, citizens also can sue officials who exceed their authority in implementing family planning policy, and there are instances in which individuals have exercised this right. In late 1998, China and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched a 4 -year pilot project in 32 counties to address population growth solely through the use of voluntary measures on an experimental basis, emphasizing education and economic development.
In preparation for the launch of the program, the Government held training conferences during the year, which were attended by family planning officials from each of the 32 counties and 22 provinces participating in the program. UNFPA officials and foreign diplomats went as observers to the meetings, at which SFPC leaders underscored to local and provincial authorities that only voluntary measures would be permitted in project counties. The SFPC and the UNFPA worked together to prepare Chinese-language training materials for the program. It is still too early for an assessment of this pilot project. Regulations forbid the termination of pregnancies based on the sex of the fetus, but because of the traditional preference for male children, particularly in rural areas, some families have used ultrasound to identify female fetuses and terminate pregnancies. Use of ultrasound for this purpose is specifically prohibited by the Maternal and Child Health Care Law, which came into effect in 1995 and calls for punishment of medical practitioners who violate the provision.
According to the SFPC, a handful of doctors have been charged under this law. In 1997 the press reported that the national ratio of male to female births was 114 to 100; the World Health Organization estimated the ratio to be 117 to 100. The statistical norm is 106 male births to 100 female. These skewed statistics reflect the under reporting of female births so that the parents can keep trying to conceive a boy, and the abuse of sonograms and the termination of pregnancies based on the sex of the fetus. Female infanticide, abandonment, or neglect of baby girls are also factors. During the year, state run media paid increasing attention to unbalanced birth ratios, and the societal problems, such as trafficking in women, which it is causing.
In the cities the traditional preference for sons is changing. There reportedly have been instances in which pregnant prisoners in reeducation-through-labor camps were forced to submit to abortions. The Maternal and Child Health Care Law requires premarital and prenatal examinations to determine whether couples have acute infectious diseases or certain mental illnesses (not including mental retardation), or are at risk for passing on debilitating genetic diseases. The Ministry of Health implements the law, which mandates abortion or sterilization in some cases, based on medical advice. The law also provides obtaining a second opinion and states that patients or their guardians must give written consent to such procedures.
At least five provincial governments have implemented local regulations seeking to prevent persons with severe mental disabilities from having children. In August the Government issued an "explanation" to provincial governments clarifying that no sterilization of persons with genetic conditions could be performed without their signed consent. Internal peace in China has also contributed to the individuals living longer. Since Communism rests on the doling out of commodities and benefits based on the number in a household, the structure of the government itself encouraged population growth. The rural resurgence produced the natural effect of having more children to help with the work and produce more. Lack of space in urban area's induced pressure on couples not to have more children.
A satisfying compromise was never reached between the two mitigating factors of urban and rural family needs. Thus, an ineffective initiative was implemented. Due to the ineffectiveness of the law, compliance became a problem, especially in the rural areas. Women were looked to for the solution to the problem.
Forced sterilization and abortions were becoming commonplace in the regions where pressure was put on the officials to take action. Threats of violence and the loss of assets of a family were guerilla tactics used on the offenders of non-compliance. The self-esteem of Chinese women and girls was all but crushed with being looked at as worthless, since boys were highly valued in single family homes. Girls were to be for the use of others. In attempts to save money, girls were kept away from school and provided cheap domestic labor instead. It is obvious to see the cultural battle that women in China have before them.
The demands of rural agricultural labor undermine the one-child law and create conflict on many levels in both rural and urban China. While it is easy to belabor the oppression of women in China, one must look to the monumental strides that a Communist nation was able to take in the last 50 years. An unparalleled determination rested in the Communists goal for answering the "woman question." The strides that were taken economically have contributed to the betterment of many Chinese women. Communist China intentions were to provide women with economic equalization, which shook the foundation of Chinese society. The male-dominated household was being challenged to recognize the legitimate other half. Remembering that girls were considered "useless", brings to light the true strides that have advanced Chinese society in the form of legal recognition.
The intra-familial relations have not evolved along the lines of recognition of the individuality and authenticity of women. For example, the barbaric practice of foot binding, which rendered a woman powerless to be an economic contributor. And even beyond that, the twist in idealizing something so demeaning to women demonstrated that China was not ready to release their cultural bonds on women. Arranged marriages offered nothing for women in as far as emotional release. The more estranged a husband and wife where, the more beneficial for the husbands mother. Wealthy husbands were allowed concubines while the poor men merely had affairs.
This is not meant to imply that the state and the household are monolithic agents in an over determined system of patriarchy. Although male-domination persists, socialist ideology raised the consciousness of women to the existence of their subordinate social valuation. Women did not receive as many work points as men for comparable labor in the agricultural commune. Women were encouraged to contribute more to farm work so that men could pursue more important forms of production.
Women were recruited for political activities but then expected to fulfill their domestic responsibilities and serve the patriarchal interests of the state. In each case there were women who attempted to challenge the privileged status of men. But then there were also women enlisted by the party-state to reorient the terms of equality under socialism. In an ironic recognition of the inter-subjective synergy between the patriarchal state and household, Zhongguo Fun (Women of China) wrote the following in response to the resistance of rural women cadres to housework: Family and state are interdependent and interrelated. For this reason, in China, homework and social labor are mutually geared together, and homework is just a part of social labor, which plays an important part in socialist construction. If a woman can integrate what little she can do into the great cause of socialist construction and if she has the ideal of working for the happiness of future generations, she would be a noble person, a woman of benefit to the masses, a woman of communist morality (Anders, 46).
Women in China must still adhere to the traditional roles set about by their culture. The Communist Revolution provided the examination of the roles of women in China and implemented important steps toward the recognition of their legitimacy. Rightly so, Chinese feminists are not satisfied with their place in society and campaign for a new and better understanding of the value of women in society
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Research essay sample on Human Rights Regarding Chinese Women
