No More One Child Policy
For about 40 years China’s family planning commission enforced the “one-child policy.” Due to severe overpopulation, families in China were only allowed to have one child and were heavily, heavily fined if they had more children. In 2003 a famous Chinese filmmaker named Zhang Yimou and his wife were fined 7.48 million yuan or about 1.19 million USD for having three extra children. This is simply unaffordable for many families, so many women have had abortions in case they accidentally became pregnant. This policy also has resulted in a gender imbalance as many parents preferred their one child to be male, so often female’s were aborted. Government officials have stated this very much helped with overpopulation and reduced the number of births by about 400 million. The policy has been relaxed recently, and as of 2016 families are legally allowed to have two children.
End-of-One-Child-Policy
“Leftover Women”
There is a ton of pressure for women to get married in China, and especially for them to marry young. In China, if you are over 25 and single you are called a “shèngnǚ” which translates into “leftover women” in Mandarin. It is a negative term and if you are in your late 20’s you feel a lot of pressure to tie the knot.
Leftover-Women-in-China