China’s family planning policies forced many parents to hide their children
This resulted in a whole generation of illegal children
Who were shut out of society.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell. Most people have heard of China’s disastrous
one-child policy. It was started in the 1970s to limit births in China. And it did,
through huge fines, forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and even forced adoptions.
It’s the Chinese Communist Party. They’re good at using force.
Well, birthrates fell so dramatically, that China became a victim of its own success.
People are calling this a “demographic crisis”
because there’s not enough young people to support China’s aging population.
When the Chinese Communist Party started to realize their mistake, they changed the
one-child policy to a two-child policy in 2016. But that didn’t do much to raise the birthrate.
So in 2021, China rolled out a 3-child policy, although there’s actually no
penalty for violating the policy. So it’s basically the government saying “keep it
to 3 or we’ll shake our finger at you.” But considering China executes more
prisoners than any country on Earth, I’m sure citizens hear that and think,
“It’s a trap!”
But under both the one-child policy and the two-child policy, children that were
born outside the policy were also born outside the legal system. Without a birth
certificate or household registration, these kids were left without any official identity.
It’s basically like being an illegal immigrant, but in your own country.
Last year, China found close to 12 million children that it didn’t know existed.
China had so many kids that they lost count. Even Nick Cannon is like, “I would never do that
to my nine babies. Or is it 11? Maybe 22?” “China undercounted the number of children
born in 2000 to 2010 by at least 11.6 million -- equivalent to Belgium’s
current population -- partly because of its stringent one-child policy.
Just to be clear, these were children whose parents tried to hide them from
authorities so they could keep them alive. Because again, the consequences of violating
the one-child policy could range from crippling fines, to forced abortions.
Or even having your kids kidnapped by the local government so they could give them
up for adoption by wealthy foreigners. Who would make a generous donation to the local government.
After the 2010 census, officials statistics
put the number of illegal or “hidden” children at 13 million
Although according to the European Network
on Statelessness, “The true number was probably closer to 30 million.”
Even Peter Pan has a better idea of how many Lost Boys there are.
How does Never Never Land have a more complete census than China?
One census official said that most of these children were born
outside the country’s one-child policy. However, there could be other reasons for
people trying to hide their children. There are an estimated 20,000-30,000
children of North Korean mothers who aren’t legal citizens in China.
North Korean women who escape to China are often
sold by human traffickers as brides to Chinese men.
So they flee one oppressive regime, just to wind up in another. That’s like escaping from
Silent Hill , only to wind up in Dracula’s castle . How are these two neighbors?!
Because they’re not allowed to leave North Korea, they often don’t have passports or
any form of ID. And even if they did, China has been known to force refugees
to return to North Korea, so they probably wouldn’t register with the state anyways.
Even though technically, if one parent is a Chinese national,
the child could get citizenship. But
“Chinese fathers reportedly sometimes did not register their children to
avoid exposing the illegal status of their North Korean partners.”
Another reason for illegal children in China is unwed mothers.
“it is nearly impossible to register a newborn baby without a marriage certificate”
This “means children born out of wedlock frequently
fall into the same category as second children” under the one-child policy.
The children are given no legal rights just because the parents aren’t married? Is this
China or Westeros from Game of Thrones? Poor Jon Snow wouldn’t do any better being born here.
That supposedly changed in 2016 when all children were granted equal rights, “irrespective of
family planning and other policy limits”. “However, there is limited information to
show that . . . and some sources suggest that unregistered children still have difficulties
accessing public services” Once again,
“It’s a trap!”
And after the break, I’ll tell you why that’s such a big problem.
Welcome back. China has admitted it has at least 13 million
undocumented children. Although instead of calling them undocumented, they’re often referred to as
“black children” . They’re called black children
because the state has no information about them. When children are born, most parents get a birth
certificate, which can be used to apply for a hukou, or household registration.
It’s a tiered system. You get either an urban hukou or a rural hukou. And you are technically
not allowed to live or work outside your hukou area unless you get a migrant permit.
That means poorer people from the countryside have a hard time moving to cities to get a job.
Ah communism, where everyone is treated equally. But even if having a rural hukou sucks, it’s
actually much worse to not have one at all. That’s because you need them for almost
everything, like to register for school, get government health care,
apply for a job, get married, take public transportation, or get a passport.
You know, basically anything that would allow you to be part of society.
It’s kind of like a social security number… if you needed a social security number to take a train.
If a child was born outside the one or two child policy, parents would have to pay what was called
a “social maintenance” fee. That’s the fine for violating the policy. And it can often be many
times more than what the parents make in a year. If the parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the fee,
the hukou was withheld as punishment. As you can imagine, not being able to
go to school or access medical care put these kids at a pretty big disadvantage.
I think I’m really different to other people my age. My life is totally different to theirs. They
have an identity, can go to school, have friends, teachers. Me, I have nothing.”
How depressing. It sounds like China is creating an entire generation of emo kids.
Do you want bad poetry and a national shortage of eyeliner, China? Because this is how you get it.
The Chinese government has tried to course-correct because of the
obviously disastrous consequences of having so many people living outside the system.
In 2015, they announced that they would allow undocumented children to apply for hukou.
But for a whole generation of kids like Li Xue, it’s too late. They can’t
recover those missed years. One study found nearly half
of unregistered Chinese citizens were illiterate or had no formal education.
Reporter: Experts warn that descrimination suffered by so-called black children could
end up threatening society. Ye Tin Fang: If the government
continues to punish them, and not give them identity cards,
the black children may resort to crime. They may become burglars, thieves and murderers.
Somewhere a progressive on Twitter is saying, “How dare you imply that black children would
resort to crime! Wait, you mean a different type of black? Oh… never mind, I guess.”
That wouldn’t be good. But looking at the silver lining,
at least they won’t grow up to be communist officials enforcing insane policies.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from a fan of the show who supports us
through the crowdfunding website Patreon or the exclusive social media site Locals.
Ace Ventura asks on Locals: If the campaign for the Chinese people to have
more children is successful (whether it’s by encouragement or coercion),
will it be enough to stop the population collapse? Or is it already inevitable?
Well Ace, so far the campaign to have more children has not been successful.
In 2021, China’s population growth hit a new low.
And that’s according to official data.
Some analysts have said that China’s population is already shrinking.
And the birthrate is still falling. For some reason,
China’s Zero Covid policy doesn’t seem to be encouraging people to have babies.
At this point, it doesn’t seem like China can turn things around fast enough to stop a demographic
decline. The biggest issue is not having enough workers to support the elderly population.
There is one thing that Chinese authorities could
do to gain workers quickly: allow more immigration.
But again, Zero Covid is having the opposite effect.
Thanks for your question, Ace Ventura, and thanks for supporting the show on Locals.
And if you’re not a supporter already, join us on Locals. For a small monthly contribution,
you can chat directly with me, Matt, and Shelley,
and with other China Uncensored fans in our own social media space.
You’ll also get other cool perks—including the ability
to ask me a question I can answer on the show.
The link is below. Once again I’m Chris
Chappell, thanks for watching China Uncensored.