Opinion: The Case Against Infringing Reproductive Autonomy in China and India
This piece by Inspire Law provides a parallel study of the demographic state of China and India under their respective population control policies.
Enthusiastic discourse on legal paternalism has long pervaded the youth law circuit, whether that prefaces preparing for law school interviews or simply entails a conversation that teeters on the brink of pseudo-intellectuality. Viewing the obstruction of autonomy from a realistic perspective rather than a purely theoretical one, however, yields a more intriguing field of debate. With a rising population threatening acute resource depletion, it is imperative to contemplate if policies meant to curtail population are a necessary evil or render larger problems which grow increasingly complex to tackle. In dissecting the background, triggers, and impact of such policies, this piece seeks to draw a comparison between their implementation in China and their prospects for implementation in India.
Paternalism appears as a consequence of deep-rooted cultural norms, specifically patriarchies and longstanding imperial monarchies. An elucidation of China’s policymaking is incomplete without a glimpse into the political landscape out of which the population crisis arose. A formal democracy, The People’s Republic of China is better described as a one-party authoritarian state. One that is ‘formal’ in its true sense, denoted by the lack of a democratic election process and the unequivocal superiority of the CCP. Somewhere down the line, the advent of the one-child policy was an indirect by-product of the disproportionate power the government wields over its citizens’ will. The policy—a coercive measure which limited the number of children per couple—was introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and only concluded in 2016. By then, however, it may have been too late to undo the disaster that the policy had woven into the fabric of Chinese Society. The controversy behind such a policy lies in the radical intervention by the government into the private reproductive lives of citizens; a testament to the infringement of basic autonomy that is a quintessential part of Chinese governance. Policymakers boast about having prevented over 400 million births in China, at a time when the population grew unchecked at a supposedly alarming rate, but fail to address the dire aftermath that plagues China today.
According to the World Population review, India’s population has already surpassed China to become the world’s largest. Supposedly an epitome of democracy, in reality India seems to be barrelling towards authoritarianism with a focus on religious intolerance and classist tendencies. Although never formally implemented, there have been attempts to establish a population control policy in India at smaller scales, nevertheless resulting in tremendous catastrophe.
One disdainful commonality between Indian and Chinese population policies has been forced sterilisation, especially directed towards vulnerable communities. Under the CCP, dissent from the citizens is not permitted, accompanied by stringent control over religious activity in the state. In 1983, Chinese women who gave birth to two or three children were forcefully sterilised—an outright violation to their reproductive autonomy. The effects of such hostilities becoming commonplace in the early 80s extend till the present day, except they are now coloured by religious repression. The Uyghur muslims have long been a target of the Chinese government, and remain detained in concentration camps. Apparently, the relaxation of the population policy in 2016 excluded ethnic minorities; In the case that Uyghur women exceeded the one-child birth limit, they were immediately subject to forced sterilisation. Such a restriction placed on only certain communities is not only a glaring instance of cultural erasure, but is also blatantly tantamount to genocide.
The Indian counterpart to this instance of governmental discrimination was prevalent under the administration of former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The Gandhi government is notoriously recalled for its bigoted outlook towards the citizens. During the National Emergency declared in 1975 to fabricate supposed electoral fraud, civil liberties in India were suspended and Gandhi assumed an overtly dictatorial role. In this period, over 6.2 million Indian men were forcefully sterilised under the guise of improving the population crisis. Alarmingly, this number is 15 times that of forced sterilisations conducted by the Nazis. What remains unsaid here, however, is that a majority of those who underwent the procedure were from lower castes and poorer backgrounds symbolising a kind of population gentrification in the country. Close to 2000 men died from botched procedures.
With India now under potential megalomaniac PM Narendra Modi’s administration, the introduction of a coercive policy would generate something much graver. Such a policy was attempted by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Aditynath, with the ‘UP Population Control, Stabilization, and Welfare Bill, 2021’. A controversial clause of the bill was the denial of government jobs to those with more than two children—a method to limit the population by denying citizens the right to employment. More importantly, Adityanath, a devout Hindu, has subtly implied that the root of the population crisis in India is the Muslim community which is stereotyped by a lack of family planning with men engaging in polygamy. Such a perspective threatens the secularity of the cultural melting pot that is India, providing the already anti-Islamic government with more of an impetus to exclusively penalise Muslims in India.
Another key victim of such attempts is unsurprisingly the female population. With both India and China glorifying the male child and viewing them as financial boons, gender imbalances are bound to increase. In China, the one-child policy saw an unprecedented upsurge in female foeticides, death of female infants under the age of 1, and abortions—all in an attempt to procure male progeny. Androcentrism in China is more succinctly represented through statistics. As of 2016, there are over 33 million more men than women in China, dulling prospects for increasing birth rates and harbouring further misogyny. From a more derivative standpoint, male-dominated societies are more likely to be aggressive which may have implications on the violent tendencies in foreign relations between China and other countries.
India, a country infested with crimes and injustices towards women, would resemble the condition of China if a policy was to take effect. In fact, abortions in India are state-controlled and sex-determine clinics are illegal in order to minimise transgressions against the girls in India. The policy would incentivize dangerous, illegal abortions, and artificially hike up the maternal mortality rate presenting the illusion that childbirth is detrimental to the mother. This could exacerbate the gender ratio in India and create reluctance towards having children amongst Indian women, driving down birth rates. Such belligerence is rarely, if ever, brought to the public eye which tends to generate ignorance around government paternalism and its ill-effects.
China’s fertility rate between 1979 and 2020 has more than halved from 2.74 to 1.28 births per woman—a manifestation of the policy. However, what makes this number even more significant is that China’s population is rapidly ageing with an average age of 38.4 years. A shrinking labour market with an already declining population foretells China’s economic regression with manufacturing rerouting to countries with cheaper labour such as Bangladesh and India. This promotes the culture of sweatshops, with monolith corporations capitalising on inexpensive manufacturing that is concentrated away from what was once the manufacturing hub of the world. The state of the labour market has led to longer working hours in China, with overtime and overworking becoming pressing issues in the country. In India, labour laws are severely underdeveloped with union strikes rampant across the country. The demographic crises faced by China would be exponentially magnified in India within the context of existing legislation.
Moreover, in terms of average population age, India stands as one of the youngest at 28.4 years (10 less than China). The 2023 Government Budget of India is disproportionately youth-focused, with the establishment of better educational infrastructure to reverse brain drain. If India’s average age was to descend to the level of China’s, it would endanger any efforts made to benefit from India’s demographics.
The debate concludes with China’s futile attempts to ameliorate imbalances in their population. Although parents are permitted to have more children under the law, larger families are no longer reflected in societal trends. A spike in the cost of living puts a damper on any desire to have more than 1 child, or any children at all. With all that the CCP is capable of—and all that the Indian system may radicalise into—the framing of draconian repopulation policies is not out of the picture, and may transport the countries into a dystopia as was first described by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale; the case indubitably stands against the implementation of a one-child policy in India. The truth, though, is that this proposed discouraging future is one I might actually live to begrudgingly witness.
This Opinion Piece is specially curated by our lead writer, Anoushka Ichpanani
Comentarios