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98–715 PDF 2016

CHINA’S NEW ‘‘TWO–CHILD POLICY’’ AND THE 

CONTINUATION OF MASSIVE CRIMES AGAINST 

WOMEN AND CHILDREN 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

DECEMBER 3, 2015 

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

House Senate 

CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

DIANE BLACK, Tennessee 

TIM WALZ, Minnesota 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

MICHAEL HONDA, California 

TED LIEU, California 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Cochairman 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

STEVE DAINES, Montana 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

CHRISTOPHER P. LU, Department of Labor 

SARAH SEWALL, Department of State 

STEFAN M. SELIG, Department of Commerce 

DANIEL R. RUSSEL, Department of State 

TOM MALINOWSKI, Department of State 

PAUL B. PROTIC, Staff Director 

ELYSE B. ANDERSON, Deputy Staff Director 

(II) 

(III) 

CO N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS

Page 

Opening Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S. Representative from 

New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China ....... 1 

Pittenger, Hon. Robert, a U.S. Representative from North Carolina .................. 3 

Lieu, Hon. Ted, a U.S. Representative from California ....................................... 4 

Hultgren, Hon. Randy, a U.S. Representative from Illinois ................................ 5 

Hartzler, Hon. Vicki, a U.S. Representative from Missouri ................................. 5 

Eberstadt, Henry, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, The American 

Enterprise Institute ............................................................................................. 6 

Littlejohn, Reggie, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers ....................................................................................................................... 8 

Huang, Sarah, Women’s rights advocate ............................................................... 12 

Li, Jennifer, Co-founder, China Life Alliance ....................................................... 14 

Mosher, Steven W., President, Population Research Institute ............................ 17 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

Eberstadt, Henry ..................................................................................................... 32 

Littlejohn, Reggie ..................................................................................................... 35 

Huang, Sarah ........................................................................................................... 40 

Li, Jennifer ............................................................................................................... 50 

Mosher, Steven W. ................................................................................................... 51 

Smith, Hon. Christopher, a U.S. Representative from New Jersey; Chairman, 

Congressional-Executive Commission on China ................................................ 57 

Rubio, Hon. Marco, a U.S. Senator from Florida; Cochairman, CongressionalExecutive Commission on China ........................................................................ 58 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

‘‘How Many ‘Missing Females’ for China’s One Child Policy Era (1981– 

2015)?,’’ submitted by Henry Eberstadt ............................................................. 60 

Op-ed from the Wall Street Journal titled, ‘‘China’s New Two-Child Policy 

and the Fatal Conceit,’’ by Henry Eberstadt, dated October 29, 2015 ............ 66 

Witness Biographies ................................................................................................ 67 

(1) 

CHINA’S NEW ‘‘TWO–CHILD POLICY’’ AND THE 

CONTINUATION OF MASSIVE CRIMES 

AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN 

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2015 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA, 

Washington, DC. 

The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in 

Room HVC 210, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Christopher Smith, 

Chairman, presiding. 

Also Present: Representatives Pittinger, Lieu, Hultgren, Pitts, 

and Hartzler; and Senators Brown and Daines. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S. 

REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL–EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Chairman SMITH. Good morning to everybody. 

The Chinese Government has spent the past 35 years telling couples what their families must look like. 

Thirty-five years of state-sponsored violence against women, including coerced abortions and involuntary sterilizations, in the 

name of population control. 

Thirty-five years of viewing children as excess baggage from the 

day they are conceived, particularly the girl child. 

Thirty-five years of wasting precious human capital and potential, and 35 years of committing massive crimes against women 

and children, enabled by pro-abortion, non-governmental organizations and the United Nations Population Fund, or the UNFPA. 

Despite the platitude and applause by some being heaped on China’s announced two-child policy, the proposal does not change the 

basic structure of coercive population control, and it is not some 

major reversal of policy to be lauded. 

And, this so-called reform is not even a done deal yet. According 

to the world-famous demographer, Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, who will 

testify today, the one-child policy may become a two-child policy, 

but the coercive population control apparatus remains unchanged. 

Dr. Eberstadt says, ‘‘To be clear,’’ and I quote him here, ‘‘that 

shift has not yet taken place. To the contrary, just days after the 

October 29 announcement, China’s National Health and Family 

Planning Commission, which oversees the population program, emphasized that the new norms were not yet, ‘valid’ and described the 

two-child policy as a ‘proposal,’ indicating furthermore that ‘this 

2 

proposal would have to be approved by Beijing’s legislature next 

year before it might eventually be enacted.’’ 

That said, the two-child policy may allow for more births, if enacted, at some future date, but it does not remove the pernicious 

incentives given the local officials to pressure and force mothers to 

abort a child if the birth has not been approved by the state or is 

the couple’s third child. 

Chinese families are still not free to determine the size of their 

own families, nor does this policy erase the enormous physical and 

psychological damage imposed on women done by three-and-a-half 

decades of highly coercive birth limitations. 

We should not be applauding China’s policy. We should be insisting, however, that they abolish all birth limits forever. 

Chen Guangcheng, the famous Chinese legal advocate and 

human rights champion, calls China’s population control policies 

genocide. He calls for an international tribunal to vigorously investigate these crimes against humanity. And Mr. Chen calls on the 

Obama administration to enforce existing U.S. law and bar Chinese 

officials associated with the policy from entry to the United States. 

I would note parenthetically that I wrote that law in 2000. The 

Admiral Nance-Meg Donovan Foreign Relations Act, there was a 

provision of that law, and I wrote it, and the Obama administration has completely and utterly failed to enforce and implement its 

provisions. 

Today we are sending another letter—and I have asked this at 

multiple hearings over the last several years—asking the President 

to just simply implement the law, which he has not done. And, 

hopefully, we will get an answer back at least giving a reason why 

they have chosen not to implement a human rights law. 

The Chinese Government is not the only one culpable in this heinous crime against women and children. The U.N. Population Fund 

[UNFPA], as we know, helped fund birth restrictions, fund forced 

abortions and a massive and coercive family planning bureaucracy. 

Several years ago I had a face-to-face meeting in Beijing with 

Madame Peng Pei-yun, the bureaucrat in charge of China’s draconian population program. Madame Peng repeatedly told me that 

my concerns about coercion were unfounded and said the UNFPA 

was there. They were on the ground and found no coercion whatsoever. Of course, that is a complete whitewash. 

The UNFPA has whitewashed China’s crimes for decades and 

continues to do so today. On their website, the UNFPA justifies its 

history in China, saying that they were tasked by the executive 

committee to help China and had to engage with China as a sovereign nation. 

Since 1994, the UNFPA claims that their efforts have focused on 

getting China to adopt a rights-based approach to family planning, 

saying they oppose coercion, violence, forced abortion, and sterilization as a violation of basic human rights. 

Yet there is absolutely no evidence that their efforts made one 

bit of difference in changing China’s policy. And again, part of the 

answer to critics like myself and others has always been the 

UNFPA is here, on the ground, and they give us a clean bill of 

health. 

3 

The UNFPA, I would submit, is complicit in China’s coercive population control policies. The United States and others who help 

fund the UNFPA programs in China are also complicit. It is a dark 

and bloody stain that cannot be washed away. 

I would note again that the Kemp-Kasten law, current law, it 

will be repeated again even in the Omnibus Bill that will be adopted probably by the end of next week, continues the UNFPA ban via 

the Kemp-Kasten, which requires a due-diligence effort by the administration, which they have not done, and they just send a check 

to New York without even going through the motions. 

I hope China will abolish all aspects of its horrific birth control 

policy as soon as possible, and it ought to be looking to compensate 

its victims. For me and many others opposed to this policy, it is a 

matter of justice and human rights. For the Chinese Government, 

it is now becoming increasingly a matter of economic survival. 

China’s government says it is instituting a two-child policy to 

stem the twin demographic time bombs of a rapidly aging population and millions of men unable to find wives. But this new policy 

is unlikely to solve those problems. 

As the Economist has noted, by 2025 nearly one in four Chinese 

citizens will be over the age of 60. At the same time, China’s working-age population has shrunk in each of the past three years. 

These factors are likely to hurt not only the government balance 

sheets, but also economic growth in China. 

This should be of particular concern to the Chinese Communist 

Party, as economic growth is the primary source of their ill-begotten legitimacy. 

The minimal policy change announced in October will do little to 

address the three decades-plus decimation of the female population. 

Approximately 40 million women and girls—and I think the 

number is far higher, perhaps millions more—are missing from the 

population. A policy that can only be accurately described as 

gendercide; the extermination of the girl child in society—simply 

because she happens to be a girl. The lack of girls has led to a dramatically skewed gender ratio. An estimated 30-plus million—some 

say 40—will be unable to find wives in the coming decades. I mean, 

that is unbelievable, and that has become a magnet for human 

trafficking. 

The Chinese Government should be concerned, as should China’s 

neighbors, as to the consequences of this. It is a ticking time bomb. 

We now see more human trafficking and forced marriages and sexual slavery. NGOs working in Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, have all 

reported an increase in trafficking of women and girls into China 

in recent years. And even if China ends its birth restrictions, given 

its current demographics, this problem of the shortage of women in 

China will only get worse in the coming decade. 

I would like to now yield to Mr. Pittenger, a Commissioner, for 

any comments he might have. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT PITTENGER, A U.S. 

REPRESENTATIVE FROM NORTH CAROLINA 

Representative PITTENGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you for your leadership in such a grave concern to each of us. 

4 

I returned from China. I was there this fall, meeting with the 

leadership in Beijing and Shanghai and Shenzhen, with business 

leaders and government leaders, and had formal and informal discussions regarding issues related to human rights, religious liberties, freedoms of conscience, and, yes, the issues related to forced 

abortions. 

On one occasion, one of the leaders quietly lamented to me that 

they felt that this policy was horrific and should hopefully be 

changed in their culture. And they saw the impact that it had on 

women’s lives and was a real dark stain upon their culture. So my 

hope and prayer is that that will take place. 

However, the Chinese Government has shown blatant disregard 

for these basic human rights of their people. These thinly veiled offenses against freedom of the press, expression, religion, and 

speech, as well as their focused attacks on international entities 

and human rights advocates paint a picture of a stifling and oftentimes terrifying life for the Chinese people. 

China’s population control policies are perhaps the most widely 

known offense. These policies are particularly egregious and are arguably the most systemically and heavily enforced in the world, 

with severe emotional and physical harm on women. 

China’s national and provincial family planning laws and regulations stipulate if, when, and how often Chinese citizens may bear 

children. At the local level, enforcement of population control policies has led to reports of traumatic violations of individual rights, 

including forced abortions, sterilizations, involuntary implantation 

of birth control devices, and illegal children going unregistered. 

Last month, China announced that their one-child policy would 

become a two-child policy. While this change shows that the Chinese Government recognized the failure of its policy, it is, frankly, 

not enough. 

With a rapidly aging population, shrinking workforce and a large 

cohort of young men who will be unable to establish families, China’s continued adherence to its population control policies—not 

only does it violate international human rights standards, but goes 

against China’s own interest. 

We must continue unwaveringly to take a firm stand in opposition to China’s population control policies, using every reasonable 

resource available to facilitate their abolition. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Representative Lieu? 

STATEMENT OF HON. TED LIEU, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CALIFORNIA 

Representative LIEU. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Last month I had an opportunity to go to Hong Kong, Beijing, 

and Tibet with Leader Pelosi, on a CODEL. We raised issues of religious freedom, autonomy in Tibet, and human rights across 

China. It has been widely acknowledged that China’s one-child policy has been a disaster. 

I look forward to hearing from the witnesses what they think of 

China’s new policy, which also continues to restrict human freedom. 

Thank you. 

5 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Lieu. 

Commissioner Hultgren? 

STATEMENT OF HON. RANDY HULTGREN, A U.S. 

REPRESENTATIVE FROM ILLINOIS 

Representative HULTGREN. I do not have much but a comment— 

and that is, this is such an important subject for us to be discussing, to figure out ways that we as Members of Congress can 

highlight, really, the tragedy, the loss that has happened there, 

and the need for change of policy—real change in policy, not just 

talk. So I am looking forward to hearing from our witnesses. 

I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

The distinguished gentlelady from Missouri, Vicki Hartzler. 

STATEMENT OF HON. VICKI HARTZLER, A U.S. 

REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI 

Representative HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am just 

glad to be able to be a part today of this very important discussion 

and hope that we will be able to advocate and do something to help 

the women and the families of China be able to determine their 

own futures. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much. 

I would like to introduce our distinguished panel, beginning with 

Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, who is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at The American Enterprise Institute. A political 

economist and demographer by training, he is a senior adviser to 

the National Bureau of Asian Research and has served on the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Global 

Leadership Council, the World Economic Forum, and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as a consultant to 

the World Bank, Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Bureau of the Census. 

Ms. Reggie Littlejohn is founder and president of Women’s 

Rights Without Frontiers, a broad-based international coalition 

that opposes forced abortion and sexual slavery in China. Ms. 

Littlejohn is an acclaimed expert on China’s one-child policy, having testified six times before the U.S. Congress, three times before 

the European Parliament, and presented at the British, Irish, and 

Canadian Parliaments as well. 

She has briefed officials at the White House, Department of 

State, United Nations, and the Vatican. Her Save-a-Girl Campaign 

has saved more than 150 baby girls from sex-selective abortion or 

grinding poverty in China. 

Ms. Jennifer Li lived in China for many years and is cofounder 

of China Life Alliance, a network of individuals, churches, and ministries who seek to protect the lives of millions in China who are 

threatened by abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and human trafficking. 

They do this by educating and mobilizing groups to rescue 

women and save children through their safe house network, legal 

aid network, coercive abortion rescue teams, and in a variety of 

other ways. 

6 

We will then hear from Ms. Sarah Huang, who has personally 

rescued more than 80 Chinese women and children threatened by 

abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and trafficking. 

Since 2013, international media has covered the efforts of Sarah, 

a humble pastor in China who has been nicknamed the Mother Teresa of China. And she courageously assists vulnerable women who 

must hide their pregnancies to escape coercive abortions from Chinese family planning cadres. 

Sarah has been working closely behind the scenes with China 

Life Alliance and has been pivotal in assisting numerous Chinese 

families, including a number of widely reported forced abortion 

cases that have been leaked into the international media. 

Sarah Li is currently pregnant with her second child and now experiencing her own battle to save the life of her unborn child from 

a mandatory abortion. 

We will then hear from Mr. Steven Mosher, who is president of 

the Population Research Institute and has worked tirelessly since 

1979 to fight coercive population control programs. He is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues. He 

served as director of the Asian Study Center at the Claremont Institute from 1986 to 1995 and was appointed in 1991 to serve as 

commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Broadcasting to the PRC. 

Following a period of naval service in 1979, he became the first 

American social scientist permitted to do research in China since 

the Communist revolution. And I would note that it was Steven 

Mosher who broke the story to the world and to Congress about 

what was going on, and his books and his writings brought the 

bright line of scrutiny to this infamous policy. And that was in the 

early 1980s. So I want to thank Dr. Mosher for that leadership. 

Dr. Eberstadt? 

STATEMENT OF HENRY EBERSTADT, HENRY WENDT SCHOLAR 

IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INTSTITUTE 

Mr. EBERSTADT. Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress, distinguished co-panelists and esteemed guests, it is an honor and a 

pleasure to be here with you today. With your permission, I would 

like to ask that a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed I did on this 

same subject be added to the record. 

Chairman SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. EBERSTADT. On October 29 of this year, a shift from a onechild to a two-child norm was announced by the Central Committee 

of the Chinese Communist Party at the 5th Plenum of the 18th 

Party Congress. In other words, the Party signaled that it would 

be abandoning the one-child policy it had promulgated and would 

now be moving to allow all parents in China to have two children. 

To be clear, as the Chairman has already indicated, that shift 

has not yet taken place. Suffice it to say that the particulars of the 

new two-child policy thus still remain to be seen. It is not too soon, 

however, to make a few basic points. 

First, the end of the one-child policy will not mean the end of coercive birth control in China. This is a critical fact that cannot be 

underscored sufficiently. 

The Chinese Government is not retiring its enormous apparatus 

of involuntary population plan enforcement. Beijing is not relinVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
7 

quishing its claim that the state rather than parents should be the 

proper authority for deciding how many children China’s families 

may have. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party is merely preparing to recalibrate the birth restrictions it will impose on its subjects. 

By all indications, the sorts of ugly human rights violations that 

other witnesses will be describing here this morning, up to and including criminalizing out-of-quota pregnancies and forcibly compelling abortions against the will of the mother, will still be very 

much part and parcel of China’s population policy agenda. 

Second, any two-child norm would necessarily and inescapably 

still expose parents who desire more than two children to coercive 

birth control. For China’s population planners, there is no contradiction whatsoever between raising the permissible birth quota 

and deploying the power of the state against birth quota violators. 

Third, in addition to its obvious demographic focus, China’s population program should be understood to serve more broadly as an 

instrument of population control, in the more general sense of social control. And it is not a stand-alone policy in China in this regard. 

We must bear in mind contemporary China’s hukou system of 

household registration and residence permits, the likes of which is 

only seen otherwise today in the DPRK, i.e., North Korea. 

At this writing, a distinct majority of the young men and women 

in China’s big cities, thanks to this hukou program, are de facto illegal aliens in their own country for violating these established 

hukou rules. I can show you a little graphic of this on the slide over 

there. The blue and red are the non-hukou residents in big cities. 

The transparent is the legal residents in big cities. 

The hukou violators do not have rights to social services in their 

new locales. They cannot move their families with them. They are 

discriminated against economically in the cities and they will always, always lose in any dispute with locals. It is akin to Soweto 

with Chinese characteristics. 

One might think that the obvious solution to this problem would 

be to relax the hukou restrictions or to scrap them altogether. But 

despite considerable talk of hukou reform over the past two decades in Beijing, Chinese authorities have shown extreme reluctance 

to do away with the hukou system and practice. 

Given both the nature of Chinese rule and the traditions that 

predate it, we should not be surprised if authorities in Beijing 

prove similarly surprisingly attached to coercive population policy 

precisely because of the social control it affords the rulers over the 

ruled. 

Fourth, it is worth noting that some Chinese researchers and 

academics are already calling for more aggressive measures to 

stimulate population growth. Is it possible that Beijing might reverse course in the future and veer from anti-natal to pro-natal coercive birth control? 

Steven Mosher is here this morning and I do not want to steal 

any of Steve’s thunder, but I would be a plagiarist if I did not quote 

him on what he has written about this. 

Steve has said ‘‘the same Party officials who have been responsible for decades of forced abortions and sterilizations would preVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
8 

sumably have no qualms over enforcing mandatory pregnancy on 

young women, if they were ordered to do so.’’ 

Finally, among the many unanswered questions concerning coercive birth control in China, the most important and perhaps also 

surprising is its ultimate demographic impact. 

Strange as this may sound, demographers and population specialists have yet to offer a plausible and methodologically defensible estimate of just how much this extraordinarily ambitious and 

ruthless adventure in social engineering has actually altered the 

size and composition of China’s population. I have submitted some 

slides and some additional testimony on this matter. 

Let me just conclude by saying forcible birth control looks to be 

the Chinese Government’s preferred policy path for the indefinite 

future. What is incontestable is that this path guarantees systematic human rights abuse. Much less well understood is what impact 

forcible population control stands to exert on the demographic 

rhythms of Chinese society. Demographic specialists need to pay 

much more attention to this question than they have to date. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Dr. Eberstadt, thank you so very much. 

Ms. Littlejohn? 

[The prepared statement and op-ed of Mr. Eberstadt appear in 

the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF REGGIE LITTLEJOHN, FOUNDER AND 

PRESIDENT, WOMEN’S RIGHTS WITHOUT FRONTIERS 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Honorable members of the Commission, Representative Chris Smith, Mr. Pittenger, Mr. Lieu, Mr. Hultgren, I 

am grateful for this opportunity to testify here today as we discuss 

China’s new two-child policy, which continues the massive crimes 

against women and children under the one-child policy. 

Xinhua News Agency reported on October 29 that China is moving from a one-child policy to a two-child policy, and used the word 

that they were ‘‘abandoning’’ the one-child policy. That word is extremely misleading. 

The two-child policy will not end any of the human rights abuses 

that were caused by the one-child policy, including forced abortions, 

forced sterilizations as well as the sex-selective abortion of baby 

girls. 

Coercion and control remain at the core of the two-child policy, 

just as it was under the one-child policy. As Chen Guangcheng succinctly tweeted, ‘‘there is nothing to be happy about. First, the CCP 

would kill any baby after one. Now they kill any baby after two.’’ 

It appears, therefore, that China plans to maintain its iron grip 

over the wombs of women. The Chinese Communist Party will continue to intrude into the bedrooms and between the sheets of the 

people of China, requiring an arduous process to get a birth permit, 

a system of paid informants and ultrasound checks to make sure 

that a woman’s IUD is still in place. 

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has a network of field workers in one area of rural China, and I have been in communication 

with the head of that network over the weekend. I want to report 

to you from our network on the ground in China what the response 

is in rural China, in our area, to this two-child policy. 

9 

And the response is that it is no big deal whatsoever, and it is 

not going to resolve the problems in the countryside of China. 

The main reason for this is because of the continued threat of 

forced sterilization, so that if a woman has a son, she is not likely 

then to get pregnant again, because she has her son. And if she has 

a second child, she is going to be forcibly sterilized. These forced 

sterilizations not only ruin a woman’s reproductive health. They 

ruin a woman’s general health as well. 

According to my network, a woman—before she is sterilized, 

women as well as men do hard labor on the farms. After they are 

sterilized, a woman cannot even pump water out of the well. And 

this lasts forever. The woman is permanently disabled from doing 

hard farm labor, and this is a huge, catastrophic event for her family and the villages. 

Especially a woman whose first child is a girl is going to feel that 

she has to hide her second pregnancy, because if it is a boy, she 

is going to be forcibly sterilized after giving birth. But even if it is 

another girl, she does not want the authorities to know about this 

because, number one, she will be forcibly sterilized if she gives 

birth to this girl, or when she gives birth to the girl, and number 

two, she wants to preserve the ability to have a boy. 

So these second daughters are either aborted—that is what happens a lot of the time—or abandoned, or hidden so that they have 

no hukou, so that the woman can then give birth, have a third 

pregnancy if she has two girls. 

Hukou in our area is only given to a second child after the mother has submitted to sterilization. So the forced abortions are continuing under the new two-child policy, because women who are 

pregnant now, who have gotten pregnant before the new two-child 

policy takes effect, if it does, in fact, take effect, are still considered 

to be illegally pregnant; and we are going to be hearing from Sarah 

Huang, who is in precisely that situation. 

According to our network, if a woman is caught illegally pregnant and cannot pay the fine, she is still going to be forcibly aborted, as was the case under the one-child policy. 

According to the president of a local hospital and a family planning official contacted by our network, if a woman runs away because she knows that she is illegally pregnant and she is caught, 

she absolutely will be forcibly aborted. She will not be given any 

opportunity to pay a fine. 

In our village, whether or not a woman is actually forcibly aborted or given the opportunity to pay the fine depends on a couple of 

factors. One is, How powerful is the woman? Does she have any resources? Poor women, women whose families are not connected to 

the Chinese Communist Party, are much more likely to be forcibly 

aborted than a woman of means or a woman whose family members work for the Party. 

And similarly, the enforcement of the one-child policy is extremely arbitrary, and it really depends on who the family planning official is that shows up at your door. There are people who 

will be merciful and give the woman an opportunity to pay a fine 

and there are people who are merciless and will not give the opportunity to pay a fine. 

10 

Women in our villages have resorted to desperate measures to 

avoid a forced abortion when faced with an illegal pregnancy. 

Chairman SMITH. Pardon me. Ms. Littlejohn? 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Yes. 

Chairman SMITH. There are seven votes on the floor. We are at 

zero right now for the first one—we are at least 30 seconds to go. 

We will take a brief recess, and I apologize to our witnesses and 

to people who have come out, but we will resume as soon as those 

votes are over. 

If one or two of our Senators, because we understand a few are 

on their way, they will resume the hearing and then we will just 

pick it up when we—— 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Okay. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

[Whereupon at 10:30 a.m. the hearing was recessed.] 

AFTER RECESS [11:17 A.M.] 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Okay, so you want me to continue now? 

Senator DAINES. You know, we are going to keep moving forward, yeah, so I will chair here until the House Members come 

back. I came over from the Senate side here. 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Thank you so much. 

Senator DAINES. Absolutely. So, I am Senator Steve Daines from 

the State of Montana. 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. It is a pleasure to meet you—— 

Senator DAINES. No, very glad to have you here. I lived in China 

for five years, working for Procter & Gamble, back in the 1990s. 

So I had two children born in Hong Kong and have a lot of interest 

in this subject and some experience of the underground there as 

well. 

So anyway, Ms. Littlejohn, continue. 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Okay. So what I was talking about is Women’s 

Rights Without Frontiers has a network of field workers in rural 

China, and I was talking about the reactions of women in rural 

China to the new two-child policy. And I was about to tell a story 

about how women get around the forced abortion that is still required under the two-child policy. 

I understand that the following situation is common in our area. 

Ai Bao, which is not her real name, is a second daughter. And 

when her mother found out that she was pregnant, she went into 

hiding because she did not have a birth permit. 

However, she was discovered, and so when the family planning 

police tried to forcibly abort her, what she did is she found another 

woman who was also illegally pregnant but who was an unwed 

mother. Unwed mothers are never given the opportunity to even 

pay a fine or anything. 

She paid that woman 2,000 yuan to have an abortion in her 

name so that she could then use that woman’s abortion certificate 

and hand it to the family planning police. So once they had that 

abortion certificate, she went into hiding and was able to give birth 

to her second daughter. 

These are the kinds of desperate measures that people will take 

to avoid the forced abortion under the one-child policy. 

11 

Also, instituting a two-child policy will not end gendercide in 

China. As people in this hearing no doubt know, there are approximately 37 million more men living in China than women, and that 

the birth ratio of men and women, or boys and girls, is about 117 

boys born for every 100 girls born. This is not going to improve, in 

my opinion, under the two-child policy, because of the specter of 

forced sterilization. 

Many women whose first child is a boy may choose not to bear 

a second child because of the expense of having children in China; 

and because, in our area, you cannot get hukou for the second child 

without a sterilization. And these women do not want to be sterilized because it breaks their health. 

Similarly, women whose first child is a girl are going to hide the 

second pregnancy, because if they give birth to another girl, they 

want to have the opportunity to have another pregnancy to have 

a boy. And also they do not want to be sterilized, because if you 

have a second girl, you will also be sterilized or else you will not 

get hukou. In addition, there is a technology that is potentially dangerous 

to girls that has found its way to China. It has recently been discovered that cell-free DNA can be found in the blood of a pregnant 

mother. 

And so they have developed this test called non-invasive prenatal 

testing. The ominous acronym for this is NIPT. And I could not 

help but think of ‘‘nipped in the bud,’’ because this is a new way 

to detect chromosomal abnormalities, and it can be used even as 

early as seven weeks. But people already are using it to determine 

the gender of a fetus. And I just worry that when brutal son-preference meets with non-invasive blood test technology, many, many 

millions are girls are going to be aborted. 

The hukou abuses continue. Our network reports that in our 

area, unless a woman is sterilized, her second child will be denied 

hukou. Without hukou, children are denied access to health care, 

education, and other public benefits. 

There has been recent talk about registering 13 million people 

who do not have hukou. The motive here appears to be an attempt 

to make the population look less unbalanced. But Women’s Rights 

Without Frontiers demands the unconditional end of the hukou 

system as being inhumane. 

Eliminating hukou by itself, however, will not end gendercide unless it is accompanied by the elimination of the forced sterilization 

that still occurs after the second pregnancy. 

Women will not register a second daughter for hukou if, by doing 

so, they are going to be giving up the chance to have a son. 

So some have publicly wondered what will happen to the army 

of family planning officials now that China has ‘‘abolished’’ the onechild policy. This question in itself is overly optimistic. The twochild policy remains just as coercive as the former one-child policy. 

This infrastructure of coercion can be turned to crush dissent in 

any area. 

There is growing unrest inside China. Internal Chinese law enforcement data on so-called mass incidents indicates that China 

has seen a sustained, rapid increase in these incidents from 8,700 

in 1993 to nearly 60,000 in 2003 to more than 120,000 in 2008. 

12 

Meanwhile, there are as many as 1 million family planning officials in China. This 1 million army, if it were a standing army, 

would tie with North Korea as being the sixth-largest standing 

army in the world. 

Given the unrest that is happening in China, does the army of 

family planning officials, does the Chinese Communist Party regard this as being necessary to keep down social unrest in China? 

Therefore, I believe that the Chinese Communist Party will never 

relinquish coercive population control. 

As fully explained in my congressional testimony of April 30 of 

this year, I believe that the Chinese Communist Party might slowly open up the one-child policy, but they will never abandon coercive birth control because, number one, it enables them to maintain 

their grip on power through terror. It is social control 

masquerading as population control. 

Number two, coercive population control is a lucrative profit cen- ter, bringing in as much as $314 billion in fines since its inception. 

Number three, it provides an infrastructure of coercion that can 

be turned to crush dissent of any sort. 

And number four, it ruptures relationships of trust so that people 

cannot organize—because if you do not know who you can trust, 

you cannot organize for democracy. 

Sending out the message that China has abandoned its one-child 

policy is detrimental to sincere efforts to stop forced abortion and 

gendercide in China because this message implies that the onechild policy is no longer a problem. 

In a world laden with compassion fatigue, people are relieved to 

cross China’s one-child policy off their list of things to worry about, 

but we must not do that. Let us not abandon the women and the 

babies of China who continue to face forced abortion and forced 

sterilization and the girls who continue to face sex-selective abortion and abandonment under the new two-child policy. 

The one-child policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be 

abolished. 

Thank you. 

Senator DAINES. I think we are going to go next to Ms. Huang, 

actually. 

[Pause.] 

Ms. Huang, you have to turn on your microphone. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Littlejohn appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF SARAH HUANG, WOMEN’S RIGHTS ADVOCATE 

Ms. HUANG [through interpreter]. Greetings, Honorable Chairman, Congressman Smith, Cochairman Senator Rubio, members of 

the CECC and distinguished guests. I am honored to have this opportunity to share my painful story. 

And I am grateful for this country, which has provided the necessary leadership in promoting human rights throughout the world, 

including working with the international community to persuade 

countries like China to adhere to international law and universal 

values on the protection of human dignity. 

Since the beginning of this nation, the United States has had a 

great history of leading the way in protecting human rights from 

13 

the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 

unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

President Obama has even spoken on the importance of answering the responsibility to speak up for those who cannot speak for 

themselves. Speaking up for others is one of my core values and 

one of many reasons why my husband and I continually open our 

hearts and home to the vulnerable and the voiceless. 

America, you have a choice. You can choose to speak up for the 

innocent, or stay silent. In my country, women are told they cannot 

speak out for their own bodies or for the children in the womb. 

In China, the struggle is not about pro-life or pro-choice, but 

about enduring torture or enduring strict punishment for disobeying. It is because of this that my phones ring constantly by the 

very few women that are courageous enough to defy the policy, to 

keep the child. 

These strangers frequently call me and say, ‘‘I am pregnant and 

I have no options. I was told you can help me to keep my child.’’ 

Of course, I try to help them all. Unfortunately, I am just as busy 

now with the Chinese Government’s newly announced two-child 

policy as I was with the infamous one-child policy. 

Although there is an expert here today that will share—in more 

detail, please allow me to share briefly about the statistics. 

Chinese Government data reports that 30 million abortions are 

performed each year for an average rate of 35,000 per day. I personally believe the number is much higher. Because these official 

statistics only include hospitals that report their figures and the 

most abortions occur in unauthorized ‘‘black clinics’’ or at home. 

One reason why we think the number of abortions is considerably higher is because China is a shame-based culture. Chinese 

families do not want the attention of going to an official abortion 

clinic where they are required to register or show their I.D. 

As a result, most Chinese women who receive abortions choose 

to do it anonymously at the unregistered clinics known as ‘‘black 

clinics.’’ 

Now I am going to briefly share my pregnancy story. My husband and I have wanted a second child for many years, so after 

finding out we were pregnant, we were of course very happy, especially when we heard that the one-child policy has been abolished 

and thought that our problems had been solved. We even heard in 

the news that everyone in China can now have a second child. 

Although we were skeptical, our immediate reaction was to rejoice, as this would mean a lot more babies born to families that 

wanted to keep them. We thought our problems were solved, until 

we heard from my husband’s employer, the Chinese Government, 

that abortion would be mandatory until we present the proof that 

I had this IUD installed. 

So my husband was threatened that if I failed to present this 

proof that I had the IUD installed, then I would be subject to 

forced abortion. According to my experience and observation, this 

newly announced two-child policy is not applicable to every family 

and every couple, because this policy has not been completely implemented yet. 

14 

For example, it does not apply to my case, nor to those families 

who are currently in hiding in China. The new announced twochild policy is not completely bad. A majority, but not all families, 

will meet the criteria and be allowed to keep their second child. 

However, clearly China’s change to a two-child policy is not 

enough. 

Chinese families who attempt to have two children could still be 

subject to coercive and intrusive forms of contraception and forced 

abortions, which amount to torture. 

Another common myth is that China’s brutal Family Planning 

Bureau has been dissolved, thus removing all of its corrupt practices and acts of impunity. But it is not true; it just has simply 

been renamed. 

Although I do not doubt there may be some positive changes, the 

truth is that the same Party members that worked for the Family 

Planning Bureau are now employed by the National Health and 

Family Planning Bureau. This organization still maintains a strict 

quota-based system that drives employees to abuse others in order 

to protect their jobs. 

Another observation relates to the ‘‘black clinics.’’ They are unregistered abortion clinics that typically have illegal ultrasound 

machines that tell expectant parents the gender of the child. 

These clinics offer a variety of services from gender identification 

to late-term abortions, with all services offered on an anonymous 

basis. 

Now I do believe that things will change, but how many must 

suffer before that happens? I hope that many years from now our 

children’s children will remember us as the generation that did 

something about this great tragedy. Because we are the ones who 

are aware of what is happening in China. We have this responsibility to take action. 

I will also pray that the day will come where China will no 

longer coercively control women’s wombs. I believe this is one of 

the most tragic events of the modern world’s history. Can you 

imagine the history books revealing that the Chinese Government, 

through their one- and then two-child policies having killed more 

babies and brutalized more women than such events as the Plague 

or both World Wars combined? 

These tragedies are happening, and if we do not do something, 

I ask who will? If we do not say something, again, who will? 

Thank you. 

Senator DAINES. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Huang. 

Ms. Li. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Huang appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF JENNIFER LI, COFOUNDER, CHINA LIFE 

ALLIANCE 

Ms. LI. Senator Daines and members of the Commission, I am 

honored to be here today and to speak with you from my personal 

experience of China and the new two-child policy. 

I moved to China seven years ago with my husband, and I was 

eager to learn the language and culture of this amazing land. We 

knew at the time that a one-child policy existed, but were unaware 

15 

of the significance of it. We also knew that boys were the more desirable gender. 

And as time passed, we began to look around us, and we noticed 

on the way to school in the morning, on the backs of parents’ bicycles, on the backs of grandparents’ bicycles, two boys for every girl. 

We would see children exercising in the schoolyards and we noticed 

the same thing—boys in great number and much fewer girls. 

We began to ask questions of each other and of our friends. 

Where are all the girls? Where are the children with disabilities? 

Do these families want more than one child, or are they satisfied? 

As our language skills increased and as we began to make 

friends among locals, we learned couples were being pressured in 

draconian ways to manage their family size through abortions. It 

was hard to believe, and we did not want to, but it was real. 

Despite it being illegal to tell parents the gender of an unborn 

baby, thousands of black-market abortion clinics that Sarah referred to are enabling parents to have gender-selective abortions 

every day. 

As to the question, do they want more than one child, hundreds 

of Chinese people have answered me this question personally and 

said yes, I wish I could have as many children as I want, but I cannot. 

Every single day, as I would walk the streets with my children, 

I would be told how lucky I was to have many children. And people 

would bemoan to me the fact that their government would only let 

them have one. 

We can call it a one-child policy; we can call it a two-child policy. 

We can call it whatever we want, but we cannot deny the reality 

that China’s population control policy leaves men and women 

across the country without basic human reproductive rights and 

leaves millions of babies dead at the hand of anxious relatives, sold 

on the black market, or dead on abortion tables. 

As our awareness of this heartbreak grew, so did our desire to 

help. It started off as helping a few friends who were pregnant. We 

realized quickly that this was not pro-life work as we understood 

it in America. 

In America, when volunteering at U.S. pregnancy resource centers, I was taught to tell people that they had options. In China, 

there were no options. 

As we embraced our friends, our burden grew and we, along with 

a small group of Chinese friends, started a coalition for the purpose 

of helping pregnant women who wanted to keep their babies. 

After starting a variety of baby-saving initiatives and enduring 

great hardships, we partnered with churches and nonprofit groups 

to form the China Life Alliance, a coalition of Chinese citizens who 

rescue thousands of babies each year before they are abandoned, 

sold, or killed. 

We do this through education, through safe houses, through legal 

aid, through financial aid, and whatever other creative solutions 

our team comes up with. 

Over the years, we have seen unimaginable horrors. This has 

been the greatest and most difficult cause of our life. I would like 

to share with you two stories, before we are through, of my close 

personal friends. Though their stories happened under what we call 

16 

the one-child policy, under this new child policy, their outcome 

would not be changed at all. 

First, I want to talk to you about Ivy. Ivy was a single college 

student when she discovered that she was pregnant by her married 

professor. The consequences for Ivy, when she chose to give birth 

to her daughter and not abort or abandon her, were severe. Ivy was 

expelled from college and her daughter was denied a hukou, or 

birth certificate, which meant she could never go to school, never 

be treated at a hospital or travel. 

Ivy is one of the most courageous women I know. Because she 

was a single mother, Ivy could not get a government-sanctioned 

job. She worked for a pittance and found under-the-table work to 

do. She had no support and no man would marry her because 

under the one-child policy, he would not be able to have a child of 

his own with her. 

Her daughter is now a vivacious 16-year-old with dreams of attending Harvard. And Ivy works with the China Life Alliance helping other women who find themselves single and pregnant. 

My second story is about Grace, who had a daughter born with 

Down Syndrome. This story is felt deeply by me because I am a 

mother of a child with a disability. 

Population control puts dramatic pressure on parents of disabled 

children. Grace is from a minority people group which, owing to 

their rural situation, is allowed to have two children. 

The pressure to have both children be healthy and male in order 

to earn income for the family proved to be too much for their family. When the baby was five days old and still receiving oxygen 

from a tank, her grandmother locked Grace out of the house and 

attempted to kill the baby by unplugging her oxygen for eight 

hours. 

Miraculously, the baby survived and Grace called my Chinese 

friend and me and we helped them think through options and reasons to save their baby’s life. Repeatedly, as we sat there with the 

grandparents and the parents, we heard them say, it would not be 

a big deal if we could just have another child. But because this one 

imperfect child counted as part of their quota, the family economics 

made the choice to keep her impossible. 

It is challenging for me to stay composed when I share these stories. I see their tears and I feel their fears. I hold their hands and 

I hold their story in my heart. I want the world to see the heartbreak that population control has brought to the people of beautiful 

China. 

But we rejoice for those who will now be able to have two children instead of one. I believe we must continue to speak up for the 

rights of the men, women, and children whose lives are so deeply 

affected by this policy and the attempts to control their reproductive rights. 

As we ask what we can do and how we can move forward, I 

would like to ask you to remember the stories of Ivy and Grace. 

Let us honor their courage and bring change that gives them hope. 

Senator DAINES. Thanks for your testimony, Ms. Li. 

Mr. Mosher? 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Li appears in the appendix.] 

17 

STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. MOSHER, PRESIDENT, 

POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

Mr. MOSHER. I would like to start by thanking the members of 

the Congressional-Executive Commission on China for holding this 

important hearing and particularly for you, Senator Daines, for 

chairing it at this point. 

This is a hearing that is near and dear to my heart, as it was 

to Jennifer’s and in a sense, in almost the same way. I was at 

Stanford University in 1979 when China first allowed foreign researchers to come into that country, and I was the first American 

social scientist to live on the ground in China for a year and study 

rural life in China in 1979 and l980 when the one-child policy 

began. 

And it swept across the Chinese landscape like a terrible hurricane, sweeping up pregnant women, women who were three and 

six and nine months pregnant, telling them that their pregnancies 

were illegal—they had been legal, of course, a few weeks before, 

but the Party had now decreed otherwise—arresting them for the 

crime of being pregnant, taking them away from their homes and 

families, locking them up in holding pens where they were subjected to morning-to-night propaganda sessions—brainwashing sessions we should probably call them—until they were taken by force, 

by coercion, under escort to a local medical center where they were 

aborted. In some cases, the third trimester abortions were done by 

Caesarian section and babies were killed at birth. 

I was there for this entire process, and as far as I know, I think 

I am one of the only, or one of the few Western eyewitnesses to the 

way the program is actually carried out in China, with the identification of pregnant women as criminals, with their arrest, with 

their imprisonment, and at the end of the day with their forced 

abortion and forced sterilization. 

So I was there at the beginning, and I would like to say that I 

am also here at the close, at the end of this barbaric policy, but 

unfortunately, that would not be true. 

It is true that the Chinese Communist Party has now decided 

that all Chinese couples will be allowed to have a second child— 

or will soon be allowed, once they jump through the proper legislative hoops at their rubber-stamp parliament—will soon be allowed 

to have a second child, rather than being restricted to only one 

child, as some are now. 

But foreign observers who have greeted the apparent end of the 

one-child policy with euphoria should understand that this does not 

represent a new birth of reproductive freedom in China. 

Those who have publicly commended the Chinese leadership as 

if they had completely decided to abolish a policy of limiting childbearing in China that has cost so much physical, emotional, and 

spiritual damage to the families of the nation, have got it wrong, 

because the Chinese leadership has done no such thing. 

China is not backing away from draconian birth limits, because 

Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has suddenly developed a conscience. There is no evidence that anyone in the senior leadership 

has ever lost any sleep over the hundreds of millions of unborn 

children and newborn children their policy has killed over the past 

35 years, since I was first in China. 

18 

There is no evidence that any of them have shed a tear for the 

hundreds of millions of young mothers forcibly aborted and sterilized over this same period, or had a moment’s regret for China’s 

tens of millions of missing baby girls. 

What does keep them up at night, and what has prompted this 

modification of the planned birth policy, is the dawning realization 

that their misguided policy is crippling China’s economic growth. 

For at least the past two years, China’s workforce has actually 

been shrinking. That is a pretty amazing statistic in the most populous country in the world. Last year, the potential workforce fell 

by a reported 3.71 million, almost 4 million workers, a significant 

number even by China’s standards. 

At the same time, the over-60 population is exploding. According 

to U.N. projections, it is expected to more than double by 2050, 

reaching an astonishing 437 million people over the age of retirement. 

China is growing old before it grows rich, and the strains on China’s nascent pension programs will be enormous. And we could, 

Mr. Chairman, imagine a day when the Chinese Government also 

declares that the elderly are superfluous and need to be encouraged 

to prematurely end their lives. That, I think, would also fall under 

the aegis of the population control program. 

There is another reason, even more fundamental, why I am not 

celebrating the end of the one-child policy. Regardless of whether 

Party leaders allow Chinese couples to have one, two or even three 

children, the underlying policy has not, and probably will not, 

change. 

Now, Dr. Eberstadt, Reggie Littlejohn, Jennifer Li, and Sarah 

Huang have all made this point. But let me just underline the fact 

that the underlying policy is the policy of planned birth—in Chinese. 

And under the policy of planned birth, the Chinese state, rather 

than the Chinese people, decide how many children ought to be 

born in China each year, and it was none other than Chairman 

Mao himself, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, who 

first put the planned-birth policy in place. 

The great helmsman, as he was known, decided way back in the 

1950s that the five-year economic plans being drawn up by the Chinese Communist Party should control not just production, but reproduction, and they have, ever since. 

That is why the shift to a two-child policy is occurring as part 

of the next five-year plan, approved at the latest meeting of the 

Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. The official communique about that meeting, which was released by the Xinhua—the 

Xinhua News Agency, on October 29, made clear that in the 13th 

five-year economic plan, China’s leaders had decided to ramp up 

both economic production and reproduction. 

The communique itself is written in the almost-unreadable pastiche of slogans that the Party resorts to on such occasions, but I 

translate it as, ‘‘promote the balanced development of the population, resolutely carry out the basic policy of planned births, thoroughly implement the policy of each couple birthing two children, 

actively begin to address the aging of the population.’’ 

19 

So the basic policy of planned births has not changed. What has 

changed is the state’s desire to increase reproduction, and it will, 

by one means or another, increase reproduction. 

Of course, it is already too late to rebalance the population—or 

to stop the aging of the population. That is already baked into the 

demographic cake. And it is doubtful whether or not the new policy 

will have much of an impact immediately on childbearing, unless 

the state steps in with more—measures. 

When the one-child policy has been relaxed for certain segments 

of the population in the past, first for rural couples whose first 

child was a girl, then for all rural couples, then for urban couples 

where both husband and wife were only children. The results have 

been underwhelming. 

The last tweaking of the planned birth policy occurred just two 

years ago. It was particularly disappointing to Party leaders hoping 

for a baby boomlet. The government had announced that couples 

in which only one spouse was an only child would be allowed two 

children, and they planned for 20 million births in the year 2014. 

Actually, only 16.9 million babies materialized. Babies do not 

materialize, of course; they are conceived, but in a material society 

like China, we can appropriately use that term. Out of the 11 million couples eligible to have a second child, only 1.45 million actually applied for a permit. So the response was something over 10 

percent of the population. 

These figures suggest that at least among China’s urban population—of course, more and more people are pouring into urban 

centers where economic opportunities are available—couples are 

not eagerly waiting to fill the maternity wards. 

I think 40 years of anti-natal, anti-child propaganda has left its 

mark on the Chinese psyche. The Chinese Communist Party, because of 35 years of anti-people propaganda, has succeeded in 

largely dismantling the most family-centered culture, one of the 

most family-centered cultures, the planet has ever seen. 

Few of those people who grew up under the one-child policy, who 

are now the second generation of people to grow up under the onechild policy—their parents were only children and in many cases, 

their grandparents were only children—they would rather spend 

their limited incomes on themselves than, say, disposable diapers. 

So what will the Chinese leaders do if, as now appears likely, the 

Chinese people do not procreate up to plan? At present, couples are 

permitted to have a second child, but I do not expect the matter 

to end there. 

Soon they will be encouraged, then they will be motivated, and 

finally one can imagine that they might one day be ordered to bear 

children. I could at this point quote Dr. Eberstadt quoting me, but 

I will refrain from doing that. [Laughter.] 

If this prediction sounds a little overwrought, consider what 

China has been doing to young pregnant mothers for the better 

part of two generations now. They have been visited by family 

planning officials, planned birth officials, who encourage them to 

get abortions, who then motivate them and, at the end of the day, 

ultimately take them under escort to have abortions. 

You could see how young pregnant mothers who would be encouraged to bear children would be subject to periodic pelvic examiVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
20 

nations to make sure they have not secretly gotten an abortion, 

and punished if they refuse to bear the children the state wants 

them to bear. 

At the outset of the one-child policy—in fact, when I was in 

China—then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping ordered his officials 

to, ‘‘use whatever means you must’’ to force the birthrate down. He 

went on to say, ‘‘with the support of the Chinese Communist Party, 

you have nothing to fear.’’ 

Chinese officials took him at his word and women were rounded 

up en masse to be aborted, sterilized, and contracepted. Even today 

these abuses continue, and they will continue, because as far as I 

know, Central Committee Directive Number 7 of 1983 has not been 

rescinded. 

It requires women who have had two children to be sterilized, as 

Reggie pointed out. It requires women pregnant with out-of-plan 

births to be aborted, which will be the fate of women who are pregnant with a third child. And it requires women who have not yet 

been given permission to have children to be contracepted. 

That will stay in place. It will also continue to be the case that 

single women in China will not be allowed to have children, because all of their pregnancies are ipso facto out-of-plan births. 

So the same Party officials who have been responsible for decades of forced abortions and sterilizations would have no qualms 

about enforcing mandatory pregnancy. 

If the higher birth rate called for by China’s new planned birth 

policy cannot be achieved voluntarily, I think childbearing in China 

may one day become mandatory. 

What should China do? Well, China’s leaders should, number 

one, abandon the planned birth policy altogether, the policy that 

has been in place since the 1950s. They should allow couples to 

freely choose the number and spacing of their children and have as 

many or as few as they desire. 

Number two, China’s leaders should respect the consensus of the 

international community as expressed in the policy of the U.N. 

Population Fund. The U.N. Population Fund affirms that couples 

enjoy the right to reasonably decide the number and spacing of 

their children, something that China denies its own people. 

Number three, the National Health and Planned Birth Commission, created in 2013 from the merger of the Ministry of Health and 

National Population and Planned Birth Commission should revert 

to its former role as the Ministry of Health, and its planned birth 

arm abolished. 

Only if these reforms are undertaken will forced abortions and 

forced sterilizations, which have characterized China’s planned 

birth policy from the beginning, come to an end. 

Now, is this likely to happen? Well, sadly, no. I think the totalitarian impulse that drives these policies is far too strong in China. 

From a more practical, political point of view, the planned birth 

policy employs far too many people. It generates far too much in 

the way of profits to corrupt officials through the fines for having 

illegal children. And it is too closely identified with the Chinese 

Communist Party to ever be lightly abandoned. 

The Chinese Communist Party has invested a lot of its legitimacy in the claim that it and only it knows how to manage the 

21 

Chinese economy, and that reproduction is part of managing the 

Chinese economy. Were it to abandon the planned birth policy altogether, it would be admitting that its management has been a failure. 

It has, of course, been a failure. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mosher appears in the appendix.] 

Senator DAINES. Thank you for your testimony. 

I first want to submit for the record Senator Rubio’s comments, 

who is the Cochair of this Commission. So ordered. 

Let me start off, as someone who spent five-and-a-half years in 

China, living there back in the 1990s, I was in the private sector 

at the time, expatriate, working for a Fortune 20 company. And we 

were based in Guangzhou, but traveled extensively around the 

country. So I have certainly had a chance to witness both the positive as well as some of the concerning developments of the region. 

I remember having a set of twin baby girls dropped off at our 

doorstep one morning when my wife called me at work, from a desperate mother in a rural area. And they turned to an American 

family for help. And I can tell you, through a long, arduous process, 

two little baby girls are now two thriving teenagers here, living in 

the United States, adopted by a family. 

I remember working with one of my employees whose wife had 

become pregnant without permission, and dealing with the family 

planning police, but successfully resolving it to protect that little 

baby girl that they now have. 

And Ms. Li, I do remember, too, the days of when we had two 

children when we moved over. Then we had two more born in Hong 

Kong, so we were a very lucky family, with four children. And the 

comments we too would have quietly with Chinese families who 

were yearning that they could have perhaps more than one child 

as well. 

So this is more than just a hearing for me. This is also an experience that we had as a family and something I care very, very deeply about. 

There was a quote in Ms. Huang’s written testimony that said— 

she was quoting the famous William Wilberforce. And I quote her 

testimony as she quoted Wilberforce when he said, ‘‘You may 

choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you 

did not know.’’ 

Mr. Eberstadt, according to the Commission’s annual report, the 

initial relaxation of the one-child policy that allowed couples to 

have two children, if one of the parents was an only child, only results in about a quarter of the estimated increase in births that 

was expected. 

What reason, if any, is there to believe that a two-child policy 

will result in a different outcome and have a significant impact on 

the demographic crisis currently facing China? 

Mr. EBERSTADT. Well, Senator, I think you have put your finger 

exactly on the question that Chinese authorities must be thinking 

about today. For us social scientists who are interested in looking 

at evidence and empirical results, rather than government ideology, I think we would have to say that the chances that this will 

22 

have a substantially different impact from the earlier tinkering, 

the slight recalibration, would be very, very small. 

And the reason for this is that the best single predictor that we 

have as social scientists for fertility outcomes under voluntary family planning is the desires of parents. If we look all around the 

world, the best single indicator—better than income, better than 

education, better than urbanization or infant mortality or access to 

contraceptives—the best single indicator is desired family size. 

And if this slight recalibration does absolutely nothing to change 

desired family size, as we would expect it would not, I think we 

would have to presume that the impact will be minimal. 

As Steven Mosher has already mentioned, moreover, China’s demographic trends for the next generation are basically already 

baked into the cake. 

Thank you very much. 

Senator DAINES. Why do you not think they would perhaps then 

rethink and abolish any restrictions on children at all, in terms of 

numbers? 

Mr. EBERSTADT. You know, my demographer friends in China 

wonder about that also. And as I reflect upon it, my own hypothesis would be that the Chinese Government does not want to relinquish this instrument of social control, precisely because it is an instrument of social control. 

It may not have the demographic power to effect the sorts of demographic impacts that population planners would like, but it is 

still a very powerful tool of social control nonetheless—along with 

other very powerful tools of social control that the government 

wishes to maintain. 

Senator DAINES. Thank you. 

Ms. Littlejohn, do you want to add to that? I have a question for 

you as well. 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Yes, Senator. Your question: Why does China 

not completely abandon all coercive population control, given the 

fact that they have backed themselves into a horrific demographic 

disaster in terms of the gender imbalance and the old and young 

population imbalance. 

That was actually the subject of my entire testimony on April 30, 

2015. And the fact that it makes no demographic sense whatsoever 

for China to continue the one-child policy begs the question of, Why 

are they continuing it? The one-child policy started in the 1979– 

1980 timeframe. Chairman Mao had said people are the strength 

of China. And he was encouraging women to have more children. 

The average fertility rate at that time was about six kids per 

woman and now, under the one-child policy, has gone down to 

maybe 1.3 to 1.6 kids per woman, depending on who you ask. 

And that enormous population explosion under the Mao era is 

now heading toward retirement. I believe that in the beginning, 

when Deng Xiaoping instituted the one-child policy, that population 

control was the point of the policy, and the terror of forced abortion 

was a byproduct. 

I believe now that the reason that it makes no sense to continue 

the one-child policy is that terror has now become the purpose of 

the policy. And the Chinese Communist Party is a brutal, totaliVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
23 

tarian regime and they are using the one-child policy literally to 

terrorize people through forced abortion, which is a form of torture. 

Senator DAINES. Let me ask a question about gendercide. Do you 

believe the two-child policy will reduce gendercide? 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. No, and the reason I believe that is because of 

the sterilization problem. So right now, in our area of the countryside and also, as Steve Mosher has mentioned, if a person has had 

a second child, they will be sterilized. 

So if a woman has had a son, then she may very well opt not 

to have that second child, because she doesn’t want to become sterilized, which will disable her. And then—so that girl will not be 

born. That family has a boy and then the second child will not be 

born. 

Then in terms of people who have a girl first, right now in the 

countryside there is a two-child policy for people whose first child 

is a girl, they can have a second child. But people generally regard 

that as being their last chance to have a boy, and they selectively 

abort and selectively abandon those second daughters, and that 

will still happen under a two-child policy. 

So I really do not expect the numbers to change much, if at all, 

of gendercide under the two-child policy. 

Senator DAINES. Thank you. 

My House colleagues have now returned from the battle on the 

floor, and so thank you for the opportunity to chair temporarily 

here. I will turn it back to Chairman Smith. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you so you much, Senator Daines, and 

thank you for your insights and your leadership on these issues. 

Senator DAINES. Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Chairman SMITH. I would like to yield to Commissioner 

Pittenger. 

Representative PITTENGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

each of you again for your testimony today. And how heart-rending 

is it to us to see your real commitment in these life-saving measures. 

Ms. Li, I would just like to ask you, without suffering through 

details, describe to me the experience of a pregnant woman coming 

to you seeking help, and the pressures that she is receiving from 

family and from the government. And how do you deal with these 

requests? And just to give us a more personal view of this? 

Ms. LI. Okay, that is an excellent question. The China Life Alliance is, as I mentinoed before, almost all Chinese citizens. So typically, I will not interact with a desperate mother in the first stage 

of our contact. 

Usually she will speak to someone like I mentioned, Ivy or possibly one of the other women that works with us. And they will 

usually establish a meeting right off the bat, and it is actually very 

complex. Because this issue is so fraught with political danger, we 

use technology to avoid being tracked. Most of the workers use 

multiple telephones and multiple ways of communicating, and that 

is how they set up their initial contact with desperate parents. 

Would you like more? 

Representative PITTENGER. Well, it is just the pressures that she 

is under, and just—— 

24 

Ms. LI. A lot of the pressure, actually when someone is being 

pressured to undergo a forced abortion, it is actually oftentimes the 

pressure from family or from their employer that will prove to be 

too much for a person. 

A lot of women, they may be told that they need to have an abortion, but they will not go through with it until their employer begins to threaten them. Oftentimes a male employer will tell them, 

unless you show me the scans, unless you show me proof of your 

IUD, these different kinds of things, I will fire you. 

And oftentimes, their home loans or their rental contracts are 

connected with their job, and what a lot of these women we deal 

with face is losing not just their job, but their home. Oftentimes 

their car, many different aspects of their life are challenged. 

Representative PITTENGER. Thank you. 

Ms. Huang? I guess she can hear me—— 

What about women like yourself who are pregnant with a second 

child before this policy has been fully implemented. Is there any 

sense the government is being more lenient with you and with 

other women during this transition phase? 

[Pause for translation.] 

Could you speak louder, please? 

Ms. HUANG. I believe so. 

Representative PITTENGER. Okay. Mr. Mosher, despite the looming demographic crisis and calls from demographic experts to scrap 

the one-child policy, the Chinese Government has instead chosen to 

make incremental changes over the years. 

What do you think the rationale is and how do you abolish this 

entirely? Perhaps you spoke to this some, but I was not in the 

room. 

Mr. MOSHER. Well, the underlying rationale is that the Party has 

the right under a decision made by Chairman Mao Zedong back in 

the early 1950s when this was under debate in the top reaches of 

the Chinese Communist Party. 

The Party has the right and the authority to control reproduction 

under a state plan in the same way that it controls production. So 

that in the same way the five-year plan, which is passed, in general terms, by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist 

Party, and then operationalized and concretized at various levels of 

the government by the different ministries. 

In the same way, that plan will detail how many tons of steel 

or how many kilowatts of energy that are to be produced in China. 

It will also specify how many children are to be reproduced in 

China. This has been part and parcel of economic planning in 

China since almost the very beginning. 

So for the Chinese Communist Party to abandon this now would 

be, first and foremost, an admission that perhaps to the Chinese 

people it had no right in the first place to seize authority over this 

area. 

Second, it would be a tacit admission that it had gotten it wrong 

in imposing a one-child policy, which is now playing out to the detriment of economic advances in China and, of course, has resulted 

in the destruction of the family. 

And since the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy is very 

closely tied up to its most important policies, of which planned 

25 

birth is one, it will not lightly abandon this policy, because it might 

very well call its legitimacy into question, in the eyes of the Chinese people. 

So I do not see them relinquishing control over reproduction—I 

do not see that as very likely at all. It would take a fundamental 

transformation, I think, of the political system in China. 

Representative PITTENGER. Is there anything we can do in U.S. 

policy to encourage this transition of this course of policy? And 

what do you encourage Chinese families to do to value their own— 

the Chinese people to value baby girls as much. 

Mr. MOSHER. Well, I have traveled in China extensively. I have 

visited villages where there are many, many large families, families where there are equal numbers of little boys and little girls. 

Those villages are Christian villages or Catholic villages where 

there has been missionary effort made in China since the Ming Dynasty hundreds of years ago, and where they, in solidarity, protect 

their women from the extortions and from the coercion of the 

planned birth police. In most of China, of course, that kind of situation is not to be found. 

We can certainly encourage the Chinese Government to respect 

human rights, to respect international norms when it comes to the 

basic right of families to decide for themselves the number and 

spacing of their children. 

And we have been—well, I have been involved in this fight for 

35 years, since I was present when the one-child policy began in 

China. I take any relaxation of the policy as a step in the right direction, but the underlying problem, the problem that will not easily go away, is the problem of the planned birth policy itself, that 

the state has decreed that it, not Chinese couples, not Chinese individuals, have the right to determine how many children will be 

born in the country. 

Representative PITTENGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield 

back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

Mr. Pitts? 

Representative PITTS. I am just here to listen. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

I will just—I know many of the questions have been already 

asked, but just a couple of questions that I would like to point out. 

To Sarah, if I could ask you and maybe others might want to respond to it, you have said that a Chinese mother’s womb is one of 

the most dangerous places to be, and most do not get out alive. 

You point out that when you add up the numbers, the number 

of murdered children, including and especially murdered girl children, is more than both World Wars combined, which is astonishing—if a foreign power were to impose upon the Chinese population this kind of brutality and carnage, you can be sure that the 

Chinese Government would respond and defend its people. 

And yet in this case it is the perpetrator of those crimes against 

humanity. It is bizarre, and it certainly is a gross violation of 

human rights, to say the least. 

You also point out—and some of you have mentioned—the ‘‘black 

clinics’’ where ultrasounds are used. Do you sense any sense on the 

part of the Chinese Government to rein in the use of ultrasound 

26 

imaging to determine the gender of the child, which is really a 

search-and-destroy mission, as we know? 

Have there been prosecutions? Having been at this not as long 

as Steven Mosher, although he inspired all of our work on this 

from the very beginning, there is always the apologists who say 

things have changed. 

I will never forget a hearing that friends on the other side of the 

aisle held in the Foreign Affairs Committee in 1985. And I was, 

like, the lone voice objecting that there was a great deal of hyperbole, that it was all over. The high tides were over; 1983 was a big 

and bad year and China had learned its lessons, and we had even 

a Foreign Service officer who said he traveled the length and 

breadth of China—figuratively, not literally—and he was reporting 

that all is well. And I find that astonishing, that time and time 

again people are ready to put a gloss on this and say things are 

fine. 

But specifically, prosecutions against these ‘‘black clinics’’; does 

China yet get it, that they have become the magnet for sex trafficking because of the dearth of women, brought about in part because of the forced abortion policy and the one-child overlay of all 

of that? If any of you want to respond to that, I would appreciate 

it. 

Yes, Ms. Li. 

Ms. LI. So I have personally been to those ‘‘black clinics’’ multiple 

times. I have gone with my husband and I have gone with Chinese 

friends, and I have asked questions. I have told them I was pregnant, asked how much it would cost to get an abortion. 

Also, our Chinese friends do that, whether we are with them or 

not, and there is no fear on the part of any operator in a ‘‘black 

abortion clinic’’ that we have been to. 

They actually brag about their relationships with the government, with police officers. They tell us how many abortions they 

have performed for members of the government Party. Yeah, no 

fear at all. I have never heard of one being prosecuted in any way. 

Chairman SMITH. On the issue of women’s emotional health, I 

think one of the greatest overlooked areas here—not by you, but by 

the international community—is the post-traumatic stress, the horrific consequences of the one-child-per-couple policy on womens’ 

psychological health. 

On one of my many trips to China, I remember meeting with 

state family planning officials, and the New York Times had just 

recently done a page-one story about a woman who was clinically 

depressed because of the forced abortions she had been compelled 

to undergo. 

And when I brought that—and I had the newspaper with me intact, the whole paper—I said, how do you respond to that? And 

they said, it is a big lie. The New York Times is making it all up. 

There is no consequences to this. 

When a member of the People’s Congress was here leading a delegation, Madame Fu, I asked her about the 600 women purportedly 

who commit suicide every day, and a number of those, probably a 

large number, are attributable to the population control program, 

and raised all this with her. 

27 

She says it was a lie. This was over at the Foreign Affairs Committee where we had this exchange. Said I was making up the statistics. So I said, ‘‘Well, they are your statistics from the Beijing 

Centers for Disease Control, which seeks to parallel, I think, a lot 

of what our CDC does.’’ And she abruptly ended the meeting, after 

she got the documentation, which was first contained in the country reports of human rights practices, the China Report put out by 

U.S. Department of State. 

I think this unrecognized psychological impact needs to be highlighted. Any of you would want to speak to what this is doing to 

the Chinese women in particular? 

Yes, Dr. Mosher. 

Mr. MOSHER. When the policy began in—shortly after the policy 

began in 1980, there were suicides in the part of China where I 

lived, suicides committed by young women who had been forced to 

have an abortion. So it was clear to me from the outset that there 

was a direct correlation, a one-to-one relationship, between the 

forced abortion of young mothers who had conceived their children 

in love and intact marriages and were looking forward to their 

birth in a few weeks or months, and their sudden—their inability 

to protect the child they were carrying. 

And you think, it is not their fault. They were taken under duress. They were coerced into the forced abortion. But a mother— 

and the mothers here will acknowledge this is true—the mothers 

blame themselves anyway for their failure to protect their unborn 

children. 

One of the striking things about the suicide statistics out of 

China, you have already mentioned them in part, is that in every 

other country of the world, more men than women commit suicide. 

In every other country of the world, it is the elderly, middle aged 

and elderly, who predominantly end their lives. 

In China, it is precisely the opposite. It is young women, and it 

is young women because that is the precise demographic that is 

being targeted for forced abortion and forced sterilization. 

And the forced sterilization, I would add, just adds another layer 

of guilt and anger to the whole process, because what it does is it 

prevents a women ever from having a make-up child, a child to 

make up for the child that she lost. 

Chairman SMITH. Yes, Dr. Eberstadt? 

Mr. EBERSTADT. Chairman Smith, if it is all right, I would like 

to return for a moment to the question of sex-selective abortion. I 

was just reflecting on your question there. 

I think we have to say that there are two and only two sure ways 

of eliminating sex-selective abortion anywhere. One way is to eliminate the availability of prenatal gender determination technology; 

the other way is to eliminate the availability of abortion. 

INTERPRETER. Ms. Huang would like to respond to the question 

regarding the ‘‘black clinic.’’ 

Ms. HUANG. Last year, I took an American reporter into one of 

these clinics, who became sick to her stomach as she witnessed a 

floor, stained with blood and a back room where forced abortions 

were performed. 

Unfortunately, these clinics are very busy and exist in almost 

every city in China. They are not hard to find. 

28 

I recently began working with China Life Alliance to map all of 

these clinics so abortion rescue teams could attempt rescues. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the project because there were way too 

many to count. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much. And let me just ask 

anyone who would like to take it—maybe, Dr. Eberstadt, you might 

want to take the first shot at it—and that is the numbers. 

I mean, there was a human rights report, State Department report, that suggests that there were 100 million missing girls, and 

that was 15 years ago. Obviously, it is a closed society and even 

demographers probably operate with a certain amount of restraint 

because of government pleasure or displeasure. 

And Mara Hvistendahl who has testified before our Committee, 

has pointed out that in Asia, there is 160-plus million missing females, and that includes India, of course, and some other countries 

where there is a tremendous amount of gendercide occurring, sexselection abortion in particular, to lead to that gendercide. 

But we never really can get a handle on how many missing girls 

are there really, and it really becomes—it is important because we 

want to be accurate. But it is a closed society and they guard statistics very—we know that even with economic data that you can 

be tried and prosecuted and jailed if you put out information that 

is contrary to the government line. 

So I am just wondering if there is any estimate that is based on 

the best available science that you can convey to the Commission. 

Mr. EBERSTADT. Chairman Smith, I can tell you a little bit about 

my own homework. There are other people who have done their 

homework and come up with somewhat different numbers. 

Nobody, I think, would say that the number of missing girls in 

the era of the one-child policy in China would be less than tens and 

tens of millions. 

The exact number is somewhat difficult to calculate, precisely because of the incentives for hiding children in China. If one looks 

at successive population censuses in the People’s Republic of China, 

you see something that you do not find regularly elsewhere in the 

world: With each successive population count, more people show 

up. More children, or adolescents, seem to get counted for any 

given birth year, and that is not because there is a lot of in-migration from abroad; it is not because people are coming back to life. 

Ordinarily, you would expect fewer from one census to the next, 

with very little migration or even out-migration. 

So the incentives today certainly are for hiding girls—also hiding 

boys—and that makes it a little bit difficult to tell just what the 

numbers are. 

The United Nations Population Division, which I think has got 

very good researchers working there, the U.S. Census Bureau, likewise, excellent researchers working there, come up with slightly 

different estimates of how many should be counted. But that is 

based upon a certain inference they have to make, since undercounting is accepted as being the reality today. 

Chairman SMITH. Is there a number that you would—— 

Mr. EBERSTADT. I would have to go back and take a look at the 

data and some of my own work, and I will be very happy to send 

that along. It would be tens and tens of millions. 

29 

Chairman SMITH. And we will make that part of the record. 

Thank you. 

Let me—what do you think our next steps ought to be? I am 

today sending another letter to the President asking him to enforce 

the visa ban. I have been involved with several visa ban pieces of 

legislation. 

I wrote the Belarus Democracy Act, which has been well implemented by both the Bush and now the Obama administrations, 

that focuses on the dictatorship of Lukashenko in Belarus. 

The Magnitsky Act has had a mixed implementation. That was 

a totally bipartisan effort that obviously focuses on Russia, and I 

am the prime sponsor of the Global Magnitsky Act, which is pending, has not passed yet. 

But this legislation goes—the Admiral Nance-Meg Donovan Foreign Relations Act of 2000 and specifically a provision of that which 

I put in makes clear that anyone who is complicit in forced abortion or forced sterilization is inadmissible to the United States. 

And yet we asked the Congressional Research Service to look at 

this, and less than 30 people—and I would fault the Bush administration on this as well—they did not aggressively at all implement 

it, even though they were asked to. 

But the Obama administration has turned a blind eye. I have 

asked at hearings, what are you doing? Who knows if we will ever 

get an answer back to this? What would be your recommendation? 

You say we have got a policy that is law that can hold people 

to account for—to the extent that we can do it, at least deny them 

access to the United States, and we have not done it. 

What would be your thoughts on, or your message to the administration on that or anything else it ought to be doing right now, 

if they really care about the women who have been victimized, the 

families, the men—because they are victimized as well, but mostly 

the women, obviously, who bear the scars disproportionately to everyone else, and then all the dead babies? 

Steven Mosher. 

Mr. MOSHER. If I would—add on to that, Mr. Chairman, I would 

point to the very effective move to identify a half a dozen military 

officers who were involved through military-related enterprises in 

China and cyberattacks on the United States. And the level of 

cyberattacks is apparently receding now, in part I think in response to that. 

I do not thing we would have to identify all 1 million of the population control police in China. I think if we identified a half a dozen 

senior officials who were involved in implementing the policy, that 

would send a very strong message and would get a reaction immediately in terms of decreasing the level of coercion in China. 

If they were—if Chinese officials are aware that they would not 

be welcome in the United States, that they would not be able to 

invest in the United States or visit their children who are studying 

here at American universities or who are looking over their American investments in real estate, as easily, that would set them back 

on their heels. 

Chairman SMITH. Excellent idea. 

Yes, Ms. Littlejohn? 

30 

Ms. LITTLEJOHN. Chairman Smith, I know that you have been 

leading the fight to defund the UNFPA on the basis of the KempKasten violation, involvement with coercive population control, the 

emphasis being the forced abortion aspect of this. 

But in part of the testimony that I was giving while you were 

out of the room, I wanted to convey to you that in our villages, 

something that is really impacting gendercide is the forced sterilization aspect of this. 

And the thing about the sterilization is everyone agrees that 

forced sterilization is a crime against humanity. People have various issues about abortion; they might not want to touch that topic, 

even if it is forced abortion. Forced sterilization everybody agrees 

on, and it is the forced sterilization that really hampers women 

having girls. 

Because if a woman has a boy first in the village, she is going 

to stop having kids. She does not want to have that second child, 

because she has to be sterilized after the second child. So then the 

chance for the girl to be born or that second child does not happen, 

because of the sterilization. 

And then at the same time, in the countryside where even now, 

if your first child is a girl, you can have a second child. Because 

of the forced sterilization, women are aborting those second daughters because they want to save that second-child place for a boy. 

And so it is the sterilization after the second child that is, I 

think, a huge part of keeping gendercide in place. 

Chairman SMITH. Excellent point. 

For the record, the Kemp-Kasten language says that we will not 

support any organization that supports or co-manages a coercive 

population control program. So it is indeed inclusive of involuntary 

sterilization. 

But I think your point as to how this is leading to gendercide 

needs to be emphasized, and I think that was an excellent point. 

Thank you. 

Anything else you would like to add before we conclude? 

[No response.] 

I want to thank you so much for your testimonies. Again, both 

other House commissioners and I deeply regret we missed some of 

it because of the voting that occurred on the floor, seven votes. But 

I have read your testimonies and they were excellent, very insightful, full of information. 

And I think, Dr. Mosher, your suggestion that we compile a list 

of people—and any help any of you could provide to us or to the 

Commission—because we will convey that list to the administration and also do our own due diligence to try to put a list together. 

I think it is a great idea. 

You do not have to get all 1 million family planning cadres or 

whatever that number is these days. Focus on the leadership. And 

so thank you for that idea. 

With that, I guess there are no other comments, so the hearing 

is adjourned. And thank you very much. 

PANELISTS. Thank you. 

[Whereupon the hearing was concluded at 12:11 p.m.] 

(31) 

A P P E N D I X 

32 

1 ‘‘China to allow two children for all couples,’’ Xinhua, October 29, 2015, http:// 

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015–10/29/cl134763645.htm. 2 ‘‘China denies immediate validity of two-child policy,’’ Xinhua, November 2, 2015, http:// 

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015–11/02/cl134774830.htm. 3 ‘‘China stresses two-child policy not yet valid,’’ Xinhua, November 10, 2015, http:// 

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015–11/10/cl134802823.htm. 4The Economist, ‘‘Family planning in Xinjiang: Remote control,’’ November 7, 2015, http:// 

www.economist.com/news/china/21678007-government-xinjiang-trying-limit-muslim-births-remote-control 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, PH.D. 

DECEMBER 3, 2015

Members of Congress, Distinguished Co-Panelists, Esteemed Guests: 

On October 29 of this year, a shift from a One Child to a Two Child norm was 

announced by the Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party at the Fifth Plenum of the 18th Party Congress.1 In other words, the Party signaled that it would 

be abandoning the One-Child Policy it had promulgated in the very early 1980s, and 

would now be moving to allow all parents in China to have two children. 

To be clear: that shift has not yet taken place. To the contrary: just days after 

the October 29 announcement, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, which oversees the population program, emphasized that the new norms 

were not yet ‘‘valid,’’ 2 and described the Two-Child Policy as a ‘‘proposal,’’ 3 indicating furthermore that this proposal would have to be approved by Beijing’s legislature next year before it might eventually be enacted. 

Suffice it thus to say that all the particulars of this new Two-Child Policy still 

remain to be seen. It is not too soon, however, to make a few basic points. 

First: The end of the One-Child Policy will not mean the end of coercive birth 

control in China. This critical fact must be underscored. The Chinese government 

is not retiring its enormous apparatus of involuntary population plan enforcement. 

Beijing is not relinquishing its claim that the state, rather than parents, is the proper authority for deciding how many children China’s families may have. Instead, the 

Chinese Communist Party is merely preparing to recalibrate the limit that it will 

impose on its subjects. By all indications, the sorts of ugly human rights violations 

that other witnesses will be describing here this morning—up to and including criminalizing out-of-quota pregnancies and forcibly compelling abortions against the will 

of the mother—will still be very much part and parcel of China’s population policy 

agenda. 

Second: Any Two-Child Norm would necessarily and inescapably still expose parents who desire more than two children to coercive birth control. While we cannot 

calculate the size of this group of parents with any great precision, it would appear 

that this group could include millions upon millions of would-be parents in contemporary China. That group would also disproportionately include China’s ethnic minorities, including those of Muslim cultural background. Last month The Economist 

detailed the intensification over the past year of an anti-birth drive against the 

Uighur population in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang.4 For China’s population planners, there is no contradiction between raising the permissible birth 

quota and deploying the power of the state against birth quota ‘‘violators.’’ 

Third: In addition to its obvious demographic focus, China’s population program 

should be understood to serve more broadly as an instrument of population control, 

in the more general sense of social control. And it is not a ‘‘stand alone’’ policy in 

this regard. We must also bear in mind contemporary China’s hukou system of 

household registration and residence permits—a system the likes of which is only 

otherwise seen today in North Korea. 

In principle every Chinese citizen today must have government authorization to 

move outside his or her officially designated hukou locality, for example in search 

of work. Persons living and working outside their official hukou are in effect illegal 

aliens within their own land, and may in theory be rounded up and deported back 

to their place of origin at any time. (And this is not just a theoretical possibility— 

tens of millions of idled migrant workers were sent back to their homes during the 

global crash of 2008 to forestall any possibility of unrest in the urban areas to which 

they had moved.) At this writing, a distinct majority of the young men and women 

in China’s big cities are de facto illegal residents, violating established hukou rules. 

[SEE FIGURE 1] Absent far-reaching hukou reform, an ever greater share of ChiVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
33 

5Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), p. 3. 6Shan Juan, ‘‘Need seen as ‘urgent’ for boosting population,’’ China Daily, October 17,2015, 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015–10/17/contentl22206185.htm 7Steven Mosher, ‘‘A new dawn of reproductive freedom in China? Hardly,’’ The Federalist, November 6, 2015, http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/06/a-new-dawn-of-reproductive-freedom-inchina-hardly/ 8People’s Daily, ‘‘400 million births prevented by one-child policy,’’ October 28, 2011, http:// 

en.people.cn/90882/7629166.html 

na’s urban population is on track to be comprised of hukou violators, given the outlook for urbanization. One might think the obvious solution here should be to relax 

these hukou restrictions—or to scrap them altogether. Despite considerable talk 

about hukou reform over the past two decades, Chinese authorities have shown extreme reluctance to do away with hukou system in practice. 

Though more intrusive and arguably abusive than pre-Communist instruments of 

social control, these instruments do have antecedents in Chinese dynastic history. 

Indeed, in his classic study of the vast and oppressive bureaucratic edifice for maintaining social control over rural China under the Qing dynasty, Kung-chuan Hsiao 

describes a number of techniques (such as the baojia neighborhood surveillance system) that would have an eerily familiar ring in China today. Over the course of two 

thousand years, observed Hsiao, China’s rulers strove to develop and perfect ‘‘an administrative apparatus which helped emperors to assure obedience and forestall rebellions.’’ 5 Given both the nature of current Chinese rule and the tradition that predates it, we should not be surprised if authorities in Beijing prove themselves surprisingly attached to coercive population policy precisely because of the social control it affords the rulers over the ruled. 

Fourth: It is worth noting that some Chinese researchers and academics are already calling for more aggressive measures to stimulate population growth, and the 

Chinese government is at the very least granting such voices a hearing in the state 

controlled media. Days before the announcement of the new Two-Child Policy, for 

example, the official China Daily carried a story titled ‘‘Need seen as ‘urgent’ for 

boosting population,’’ in which a Peking University professor is quoted as proclaiming ‘‘two children are good, and three are even better.’’ 6

Is it possible that Beijing might reverse course in the future, and veer from an 

anti-natal policy to pro-natalism? If so, China would hardly be the first postwar 

Asian government to conduct such an about-face. Japan, the Republic of Korea, the 

Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore have all done exactly that already. The 

distinction here, of course, is that none of these other governments ever attempted 

to enforce involuntary birth control. A coercive population policy forcing Chinese 

parents to have unwanted births is certainly hard to imagine nowadays—but that 

does not necessarily mean that such a program should be dismissed out of hand as 

an absolute impossibility. As population and human rights activist Steven Mosher 

warned shortly after the announcement of the new Two-Child Policy, ‘‘The same 

party officials who have been responsible for decades of forced abortions and sterilizations would presumably have no qualms over enforcing mandatory pregnancy on 

young women, if they were ordered to do so.’’ 7

Finally: Among the many unanswered questions concerning coercive birth control 

in China, the most important—and perhaps also surprising— is its ultimate demographic impact. Strange as this may sound, demographers and population specialists have yet to offer a plausible and methodologically defensible estimate of just 

how much this extraordinarily ambitious and ruthless adventure in social engineering has actually altered the size and composition of China’s population. 

The problem is that we lack any clear idea of what China’s population trends over 

the past three and a half decades would have looked like in the absence of coercion. 

Over the decade before the One-Child Policy, China’s birth rates were plummeting. 

[SEE FIGURE 2] At the advent of the One-Child Policy era, demographers now estimate that fertility levels in the Chinese countryside were well under half their level 

just ten years earlier, and that fertility was far below replacement in China’s cities. 

Indeed, during the 1960s and 1970s, birth levels in urban China were already apparently considerably lower than in Hong Kong or Taiwan. [SEE FIGURE 3] 

Chinese population control authorities like to claim their efforts have averted a 

cumulative total of over 400 million births.8 They apparently arrive at that figure 

by tallying up abortion totals during the One-Child Policy era. But if so this would 

be a fundamentally flawed approach to measuring the demographic impact of coercive birth control policy. It fails to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary 

abortions, while also ignoring the scope and scale of pregnancies averted altogether 

in the first place under the glare of anti-natal pressure. As an approximation of demographic impact, this figure cannot be taken seriously—although admittedly it 

34 

9Lant Pritchett, ‘‘Desired Fertility and the impact of population policies,’’ Population and Development Review 20, No. 1 (Population Council, 1994): pp. 1–55. Summers withdrew his name 

from the study because he had assumed a prominent position in the Clinton Administration by 

the time it was ready to appear in print. 10Daniel Goodkind, ‘‘The claim that China’s fertility restrictions contributed to the use of prenatal sex selection: A skeptical reappraisal,’’ Population Studies 69, 3 (Routledge, 2015): pp. 

263–279. 11 I would like to thank Mr. Alex Coblin of American Enterprise Institute and Ms. Katherine 

Cole of Dartmouth for their research assistance in preparing these figures. 

would be highly meaningful to know just how many involuntary abortions Chinese 

authorities believe they are responsible for. 

Perhaps the closest approximation to the true demographic impact of the OneChild Policy we could hope for might come from tracking the gap between wanted 

family size and actual family size over time and by region or locality for China— 

if such data were available. Over twenty years ago, a path-breaking study by Lant 

Pritchett and Larry Summers demonstrated that desired family size was the single 

best predictor of achieved family size the world over, irrespective of a country’s culture or income level.9 (That same study made a powerful case that voluntary family 

planning programs typically had very little impact on overall national fertility levels.) 

Around the world today, differences in wanted fertility can apparently account for 

over 90 percent of intercountry differences in actual fertility. [SEE FIGURE 4] This 

is an extremely high correlation—but it is not perfect. In other words: even if we 

possessed detailed time-series data on desired family size for China in the OneChild Policy era, we could not be sure that any differences between real existing 

fertility levels and reported wanted fertility were completely due to coercive pressures. Moreover: it is by no means obvious that ordinary social science survey techniques are capable of eliciting reliable responses about desired fertility in a setting 

where answers to these questions are as fraught and politicized as they obviously 

are in China today. It is telling that Beijing’s serious over-estimate of the expected 

demographic impact of its 2013 relaxation in the One Child Policy was reportedly 

due in part to survey research in which respondents indicated they would be inclined to have an additional child if they had the opportunity; in retrospect it looks 

as if the interviewed couples may just have been trying to provide their official questioners with the answers they thought their interrogators wanted to hear. 

The devilish difficulty of ascertaining the demographic dimensions of the bite from 

China’s police state population control policy has most recently been underscored by 

an important study by Dr. Daniel M. Goodkind, who has carefully re-examined the 

relationship between China’s population program and the country’s rising gender 

imbalance at birth.10 Many observers (including me) take it as a given that the OneChild Policy has been the cause and the driver of rising sex ratios at birth in China 

over the past three and a half decades, but Goodkind challenges us to take a second 

look. Among his many other points, sex ratios at birth are currently at least as high 

as China’s in a number of former Soviet states that have never been subjected to 

coercive population programs. 

One curious aspect of Chinese census-taking in the One-Child Policy era is that 

more boys and girls seem to be enumerated for any given birth year in every successive national population count—despite the fact that China is a slight net out-migration country, and despite the predictable toll that mortality must exert. All other 

things being equal, we should expect the counted totals for males and females to 

decline, not rise, from one census to the next. Steady increases in enumeration for 

given birth years since 1980 are not characteristic, we should note, of either India 

or Indonesia—two other huge Asian populations with slight net out-migration.11

[SEE FIGURES 5 TO 7] 

How then to explain the steadily rising count for children born in the One-Child 

Policy era? China’s levels of illiteracy are not higher than Indonesia’s or India’s— 

nor would we ordinarily think of the Chinese government’s reach as distinctly more 

limited. Some other explanation must account for this. 

It is tempting to take these rising population counts for given birth years in contemporary China as a reflection of a widespread tendency for parents to ‘‘hide’’ their 

children from authorities at a time when penalties for violating birth quotas could 

be severe. And this may be part of the dynamic revealed in Figure 5—but no more 

than part of it. For enumeration by birth year seems to keep on rising for this generation of Chinese on into their teens, and then into their twenties. It is difficult 

to envision plausible storylines for how a forcible birth control policy could 

incentivize people to avoid enumeration at those stages in the life cycle. 

Forcible birth control looks to be the Chinese government’s preferred policy path 

for the indefinite future. What is incontestable is that this path guarantees systemVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
35 

1 ‘‘Why Critics Are Not Satisfied with the End of China’s One-Child Policy.’’ https:// 

www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/29/why-critics-are-not-satisfied-with-theend-of-chinas-one-child-policy/ 10/29/15; ‘‘Still No Dignity for Chinese Women.’’ http:// 

www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/opinion/china-one-child-policy-still-no-dignity-for-chinesewomen.html 11/11/15; ‘‘Change from One- to Two-Child Policy Won’t End Forced Abortions in 

China.’’ http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/human-rights-advocate-change-onetwo-child-policy-wont-end-forced-abortions 10/29/15; ‘‘Horrors of One-Child Policy Leave Deep 

Scars in Chinese Society.’’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asialpacific/horrors-of-onechild-policy-leave-deep-scars-in-chinese-society/2015/10/30/6bd28e0c-7e7b-11e5-bfb6- 

65300a5ff562lstory.html 10/30/15 2 ‘‘2-Child Policy ‘to fuel growth by 0.5%.’ ’’ http://www.chinadailyasia.com/nation/2015-11/10/ 

contentl15342620.html 11/1/15; ‘‘China Amps Up PR Campaign Extolling ‘Two-Child Policy.’ ’’ 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/10/china-amps-pr-campaign-extolling-twochild-policy/ 11/10/15 3 ‘‘China Stresses Two-Child Policy Not Yet Valid.’’ http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-11/ 

10/cl134802823.htm 11/10/15; ‘‘No Help for Chinese Mom Expecting Second Child: New TwoChild Policy Won’t Be Enacted in Time to Save Pro-Life Leader Facing Pressure to Abort.’’ 

http://www.worldmag.com/2015/10/nolrelieflforlchineselmomlexpectinglsecondlchild 10/ 

30/15 

atic human rights abuse. Much less well understood is what impact forcible population control stands to exert on the demographic rhythms of Chinese society. Demographic specialists need to pay much more attention to this question than they have 

to date. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REGGIE LITTLEJOHN

DECEMBER 3, 2015

Honorable members of the Commission, Representative Chris Smith, Senator 

Marco Rubio, distinguished fellow panelists, ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful for 

this opportunity to testify here today, as we discuss the fact that China’s new TwoChild Policy continues the same massive crimes against women and children that 

were committed under the One Child Policy. 

Xinhua News Agency reported on October 29, 2015 that China will move to a twochild policy for all couples, ‘‘abandoning its decades-long one-child policy.’’ 

Characterizing this latest modification as ‘‘abandoning’’ the One-Child Policy is 

misleading. A two-child policy will not end any of the human rights abuses caused 

by the One Child Policy, including forced abortion, involuntary sterilization or the 

sex-selective abortion of baby girls. 

Coercion is the core of the policy. Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced 

abortion or forced sterilization. As blind activist Chen Guangcheng succinctly 

tweeted: 

This is nothing to be happy about. First the #CCP would kill any baby after 

one. Now they will kill any baby after two. #ChinaOneChildPolicy 

The reason given for this adjustment is entirely demographic: ‘‘to balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population.’’ The adjustment is a tacit admission that continuation of the one-child policy will lead to economic and demographic disaster. The policy was originally instituted for economic 

reasons. It is ironic that through this very policy, China has written its own economic death sentence. 

Noticeably absent from the Chinese Communist party’s announcement is any 

mention of human rights. The Chinese Communist Party has not suddenly developed a conscience or grown a heart. Even though it will now allow all couples to 

have a second child, China has not promised to end forced abortion, forced sterilization, or forced contraception.1

Indeed, the CCP has gone out of its way to emphasize that family planning restrictions will remain in force. Shortly after the announcement of the two-child policy, Vice-Minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission Wang 

Peian said that ‘‘China would not abandon its family planning restrictions.’’ He said, 

‘‘A large population is China’s basic national condition so we must adhere to the 

basic state policy of family planning.’’ 2 He also said that ‘‘China needs to . . . promote birth monitoring’’ before the two-child policy comes into effect.3

It appears, therefore, that China plans to maintain its iron grip over the wombs 

of women. The Chinese Communist Party will continue to intrude into the bedrooms 

and between the sheets of the families in China, requiring an arduous process to 

36 

4 ‘‘China’s Population-Control Machine Churns On.’’ https://www.freedomhouse.org/blog/chinapopulation-control-machine-churns 1/13/14 5While shrinking, nearly half of China’s population remains rural, accounting for some 600 

million people. World Bank: ‘‘Urban Population (% of total).’’ http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ 

SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS 6 ‘‘No Help for Chinese Mom Expecting Second Child: New Two-Child Policy Won’t Be Enacted 

in Time to Save Pro-Life Leader Facing Pressure to Abort.’’ http://www.worldmag.com/2015/10/ 

nolrelieflforlchineselmomlexpectinglsecondlchild 10/30/15 

obtain a ‘‘birth permit,’’ a system of paid informants, and ultrasound checks to make 

sure that a woman’s IUD is still in place.4

Coercion is the core of the policy. Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced 

abortion or forced sterilization. 

The problem with the one-child policy is not the number of children ‘‘allowed.’’ 

Rather, it is the fact that the CCP is telling women how many children they can 

have and then enforcing that limit through forced abortion and forced sterilization. 

There is no guarantee that the CCP will cease their appalling methods of enforcement. Women will still have to obtain a government-issued birth permit, for the first 

and second child, or they may be subject to forced abortion. It will still be illegal 

for an unmarried woman to have a child. Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their 

homes, strapped down to tables, and forced to abort babies that they want. 

The Impact of China’s Two-Child Policy on Women in One Area of Rural 

China5

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers runs a campaign to end the sex-selective abortion of baby girls in China. Our network of fieldworkers on the ground have saved 

almost 200 baby girls in one area of rural China. Through this network, WRWF gets 

direct, up to the minute information about coercive population control in our area 

of China. 

I communicated with the head of our network over the weekend. Here is what 

she said about the current condition in our villages after the announcement of the 

Two-Child Policy: 

Forced Sterilization continues. 

The women in our villages do not see the new Two-Child Policy as a big improvement, because of the threat of sterilization. It is a policy that women must be sterilized after the second child—especially if both children are girls. Women who have 

a boy as their first child are not likely to have a second child, because after the second child, they would be forcibly sterilized. These sterilizations ruin not only a woman’s reproductive health, but her general health as well. After these sterilizations, 

the vast majority of women are ‘‘never the same again.’’ They will never recover 

their strength. For example, in our villages there is no running water. Women need 

to pump water out of a deep well. Before they are sterilized, women are strong 

enough to pump water. After they are sterilized, they are no longer strong enough 

to pump water. This weakness lasts forever and is devastating, because the family 

depends on the strength of the mother to do farm work. 

Especially women whose first child is a girl feel they have to hide their second 

pregnancy, because they will be automatically sterilized after the second child. If 

their second child is also a girl, they do not want to be sterilized, because the procedure may break their health and because they want to try again for a boy. Many 

women will abort or abandon their second daughter under the Two-Child Policy, just 

as they did under the One Child Policy. The second daughters who are allowed to 

be born will be hidden, and thus denied hukou, as in our villages, hukou is given 

to second children only after the mother has been sterilized. Requiring sterilization 

in order for your child to register and obtain a birth certificate is an atrocity against 

both women and children. 

Forced abortion continues. 

If a woman is illegally pregnant now with her second child, Family Planning Officials will come to her home to demand an abortion. The Two-Child Policy has yet 

to be fully implemented. Women whose child was conceived before the implementation of the Two-Child Policy are still subject to forced abortion or astronomical ‘‘terror fines.’’ 6 If a woman wants a second child, she must first obtain a ‘‘birth permit.’’ 

These permits are not likely to become available until well into next year. 

According to our network, if a woman is caught illegally pregnant and cannot pay 

the fine, she will still be forcibly aborted, as was the case under the One Child Policy. According to the president of a local hospital and a family planning official contacted by our network, if a woman runs away in an attempt to escape the fine, and 

37 

7 ‘‘Experts Worried Pre-Natal Blood Test Might Lead to Sex-Selective Abortions.’’ http:// 

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11980660/Experts-worried-pre-natal-blood-test-might-lead-tosex-selective-abortions.html. 11/6/15; ‘‘New Method Allows Noninvasive prenatal testing to detect more diseases: Study.’’ http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/201511/10/cl134799694.htm, 11/ 

10/15 8 ‘‘Crazed Chinese father-of-four stabs two government officials to death over one child policy.’’ 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2376771/Chinese-father-kills-1-child-policy-officials-registering-4th-child.html 7/24/13. 

is caught, she will be forcibly aborted. The woman will have no recourse to a court 

of law, as courts will not accept such cases. 

In our villages, whether or not a woman is actually forced to have an abortion 

depends on the circumstances. Women who are poor, whose relatives do not work 

for the government, and who do not have any power to defend themselves are more 

likely to be forcibly aborted than women who have money or whose relatives work 

for the government. Another factor is whether the Family Planning Official handling that particular case is merciful or merciless. A pitiless Family Planning Official confronting a poor and powerless woman will often lead to a forced abortion. 

Women in our villages have resorted to desperate measures to avoid forced abortion when faced with an illegal pregnancy. The following situation is common in our 

area: 

‘‘Ai Bao’’ (not her real name) is a two-month old second daughter, with a 

threeyear-old sister. Since this was an illegal second pregnancy, Ai Bao’s mother tried to hide her pregnancy. Still, a Family Planning Officer found her and 

pressed her to get abortion. Ai Bao’s mother found an un-married pregnant 

woman, paid that woman ¥2000, and arranged for this woman to use the name 

of Ai Bao’s mother to get an abortion. In this way, Ai Bao’s mother obtained 

an abortion certification from the hospital in her own name and turned it in 

to the local Family Planning Office—to escape the forced abortion of her own 

daughter, Ai Bao. 

Gendercide will continue. 

Instituting a two-child policy will not end gendercide, the sex-selective abortion 

of baby girls. Indeed, areas in which two children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide. According to the 2009 British Medical Journal study 

of data from the 2005 national census, in nine provinces, for ‘‘second order births’’ 

where the first child is a girl, 160 boys were born for every 100 girls. In two provinces, Jiangsu and Anhui, for the second child, there were 190 boys for every hundred girls born. This study stated, ‘‘sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the 

excess males.’’ Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million Chinese 

men who will never marry because their future wives were terminated before they 

were born. This gender imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in 

women and sexual slavery, not only in China, but in neighboring nations as well. 

There is little reason to hope that the two-child policy will result in a significant 

improvement of the sex ratios at birth. Many women whose first child is a boy may 

choose not to bear a second child because of the great expense of raising a child in 

China. In the alternative, they may choose not to have a second child to avoid the 

forced sterilization required after two children. Women whose first child is a girl 

will still abort second daughters in order to have a son. 

In addition, a technology that is potentially dangerous to girls has found its way 

to China. It has recently been discovered that ‘‘cell free’’ fetal DNA can be found 

in the blood of the pregnant mother. Noninvasive prenatal testing, whose ominous 

acronym is ‘‘NIPT,’’ is a new way to detect chromosomal abnormalities of a fetus 

through analyzing the blood of the mother. This simple blood test given to the mother, however, can be used to determine the gender of a fetus as early as seven weeks 

into the pregnancy. Results are available within 48 hours. Where brutal son preference meets non-invasive, early sex-determination of a fetus, inevitably baby girls 

will be selectively aborted.7

Hukou Abuses Continue. 

WRWF’s network reports that in our area, unless a woman is sterilized, her second child will be denied household registration or hukou. Without hukou, children 

are denied access to healthcare, education and other public benefits. 

For illegal extra births, Chinese Family Planning Officials may exact enormous 

sums for a family to obtain hukou. Frustrated fathers have lost control and murdered family planning officials.8 Some men have resorted to suicide in protest over 

38 

9 ‘‘Chinese father of four commits suicide over one-child policy fines so his children can go to 

school.’’ http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/chinese-father-of-four-commits-suicide-over-one-childpolicy-fines-so-his-c. 5/26/14; ‘‘Farmer drinks poison after being fined for violations of family 

planning policy.’’ http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/830847.shtml 12/8/13 10 ‘‘Plan to Register 13 Million ‘Unofficial’ Chinese Sparks Doubts.’’ http://www.rfa.org/english/ 

news/china/plan-to-register-13-million-unofficial-chinese-sparks-doubts-11252015100418.html 11/ 

25/15 11 ‘‘After the One-Child Policy: What Happens to China’s Family-Planning Bureaucracy? ’’ 

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/11/12/after-the-one-child-policy-what-happens-to-chinasfamily-planning-bureaucracy/ 11/12/15 12 ‘‘China’s Social Unrest Problem—Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security 

Review Commission.’’ Murray Scott Tanner, Ph.D. http://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/TannerlWritten%20Testimony.pdf. 5/15/14; see also, ‘‘Rising Protests in China.’’ http:// 

www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/02/rising-protests-in-china/100247/. 2/17/12. 13 ‘‘Family Planning: Enforcing with a smile.’’ http://www.economist.com/news/china/21638131- 

enforcers-chinas-one-child-policy-are-trying-new-gentler-approach-enforcing-smile. 1/10/15; ‘‘The 

bureaucracy that oversees family planning in China is enormous. According to official statistics 

of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), there are over 500,000 administrative staff and technical service providers from the central government down to the 

township level devoted to both policy enforcement and family planning generally. In addition, 

more than 1.2 million cadres assist in birth planning at the village level.’’ ‘‘After the One-Child 

Policy: What Happens to China’s Family-Planning Bureaucracy? ’’ http://blogs.wsj.com/ 

chinarealtime/2015/11/12/after-the-one-child-policy-what-happens-to-chinas-family-planningbureaucracy/ 11/12/15 

If China’s Family Planning Officials were an army, they would tie with North Korea as the 

sixth largest army in the world. ‘‘World’s Largest Armies.’’ http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/armies.htm. 

the excessive fines imposed by the government.9 The spirit of the Cultural Revolution lives on in the family planning police, who have been able to steal, intimidate, 

torture and kill with relative impunity. 

There has been recent talk of registering 13 million people who do not have 

hukou. The motive appears to be an attempt to ‘‘make the population look less unbalanced.’’ 10

WRWF demands the unconditional end of the hukou system as being inhumane. 

Eliminating hukou by itself, however, will not end gendercide unless it is accompanied by the elimination of forced sterilization and all coercive birth limits. Women 

will notregister a second child for hukou if they will be sterilized for doing so. 

Women will not register second daughters for hukou if by doing so they are giving 

up the chance to have a son. 

China’s Massive Population Control Apparatus Will Remain Intact. 

Some have publicly wondered: What will happen to the army of Family Planning 

Officials, now that China has ‘‘abolished’’ the One Child Policy? 11 This question is 

overly optimistic. 

The Two-Child Policy remains just as coercive as the former One-Child Policy. 

This infrastructure of coercion can be turned to crush dissent of any kind. It will 

therefore be maintained under the Two-Child Policy. 

There is growing unrest inside China. ‘‘[I]nternal Chinese law enforcement data 

on so-called ‘‘mass incidents’’—a wide variety of protests ranging from sit-ins to 

strikes, marches and rallies, and even genuine riots—indicated that China has seen 

a sustained, rapid increase in those incidents from 8,700 in 1993 to nearly 60,000 

in 2003, to more than 120,000 in 2008.12 Meanwhile, there are as many as 1 million 

Family Planning Officials.13 This army of Family Planning Officials can be turned 

in any direction to crush dissent of any sort. Does the Chinese Communist Party 

regard this army as necessary to maintain control in a tinder-box situation? 

The Chinese Communist Party Will Never Relinquish Coercive Population 

Control 

As fully explained in my Congressional testimony of April 30, 2015, the Chinese 

Communist Party will never relinquish coercive population control because 1) it enables them to maintain its grip on power through terror—it is social control, 

masquerading as population control; 2) it is a lucrative profit center, bringing in as 

much as $314 billion in fines since its inception; 3) it provides and infrastructure 

of coercion that can be used to crush dissent of any sort; and 4) it ruptures relationships of trust, so that people cannot organize for change. I believe that the Chinese 

Communist Party is maintaining its grip on power by shedding the blood of the innocent women and babies of China. 

Conclusion 

Sending out the message that China has ‘‘abandoned’’ its one-child policy is detrimental to sincere efforts to stop forced abortion and gendercide in China, because 

39 

14We have found in our ‘‘Save a Girl’’ campaign that the encouragement of modest monetary 

support is enough to make the difference between life and death to a baby girl. ‘‘Twin Girls 

Saved from Abortion in China, Husband’s Family Only Wanted Boys.’’ http://www.lifenews.com/ 

2014/05/30/twin-girls-saved-from-abortion-in-china-husband-family-told-wife-they-only-wantedboys/ 5/30/14. 

this message implies that the one-child policy is no longer a problem. In a world 

laden with compassion fatigue, people are relieved to cross China’s one-child policy 

off of their list of things to worry about. But we must not do that. Let us not abandon the women of China, who continue to face forced abortion, and the baby girls 

of China, who continue to face sex-selective abortion and abandonment under the 

new Two-Child Policy. 

The one-child policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished. 

Policy Recommendations 

We respectfully request that the U.S. government urge the Chinese government to: 

• Abolish the Two-Child Policy and all forms of coercive population control; 

• Offer incentives for couples to have girls; 14

• Offer pensions to couples who do not have a son, ensuring that parents of 

girls will not become impoverished in their old age; and 

• Abolish the hukou system, so that all children will have access to healthcare 

and education. 

In addition, we respectfully request that the U.S. government: 

•Establish principles of Corporate Social Responsibility, to ensure that U.S. corporations do not allow coercive population control measures to be taken against 

their employees; and 

•Defund UNFPA, unless and until UNFPA stops supporting or participating in 

the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization 

in China, in violation of the 1985 Kemp-Kasten Amendment. 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF JENNIFER LI

DECEMBER 3, 2015

CHINA THROUGH MY EYES, AS AN AMERICAN EXPATRIATE

Honorable Chairman Congressman Smith, Co-Chairman Senator Rubio, Members 

of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and distinguished guests: 

I am honored to be here today, and to speak with you about China’s new two child 

policy, to share my perspective and my experience with you. 

I moved to China seven years ago. My husband and I were eager to learn the language and get to know the culture. We knew that a one child policy existed, and 

we knew that boys were considered the more desirable gender in Chinese culture. 

At first, neither of these things seemed that significant, until we began to really 

look around us. On the way to school in the morning, on the backs of grandparents’ 

bicycles, we would see two boys for every girl. As children were doing their exercises 

in the school yards, we noticed the same thing: boys in great number, girls in lesser. 

We began to ask questions; ‘‘Where are all the girls?’’, ‘‘Where are the children with 

disabilities?’’, ‘‘Do these families WANT more than one child? Or are they satisfied?’’ 

As our language skills increased and as we began to make friends among local 

families, it all began to make sense. Couples were being pressured in draconian 

ways to manage their family size with abortions. It was hard to believe, but it was 

real. Despite it being illegal to tell parents the gender of an unborn baby, ‘‘black’’ 

abortion clinics are enabling parents to have gender-selective abortions. 

As to the question ‘‘do they want more than one child?’’ I asked the question of 

hundreds of people, old and young, during my time in China, and every single time, 

the answer was ‘‘YES, I wish I could have as many as I want. But I can’t.’’ 

I would walk down the street with my children, and every day, every single day, 

one or more people would tell me how ‘‘lucky’’ I was that I had a few children, and 

bemoan the fact that their government would only let them have one. 

We can call it a ‘‘one-child policy’’ or a ‘‘two-child policy.’’ We can call it whatever 

we want. But we cannot deny the reality that it leaves men and women across the 

country without the reproductive rights the rest of the world thinks of as a basic 

human right. 

As our awareness of this heartbreak in China grew, so did my husband’s and my 

desire to do something about it. It started off just as helping a few friends who were 

pregnant. We realized quickly that this was not ‘‘pro-life’’ work as we understood 

it in the west. The common answer that I learned while volunteering in the USA 

at pregnancy resource centers was ‘‘You have options.’’ In China, there were seemingly no options. As we embraced our friends our burden grew. We, along with a 

small team of local individuals, started a coalition for the purpose of helping pregnant women who wanted to keep their children. As time passed, we learned that 

there are ways to save babies in China. After starting a variety of creative babysaving initiatives and enduring great hardships, we partnered with churches and 

nonprofit groups to form what is now known as China Life Alliance, a coalition of 

Chinese individuals and groups that rescue thousands of children each year before 

they are abandoned, sold, or killed. We do this by educating and mobilizing groups 

to rescue women and save children through our safe house network, legal aid network, coerced-abortion rescue teams, and many other ways. 

Over the years, my husband, the CLA team and I have seen unimaginable and 

horrible human rights violations right before our eyes. This has been the greatest 

and most difficult cause of our life. However, today I would like to step back and 

to share with you the personal stories of three of my friends. Each has a unique 

story. Each of them is dear to my heart. For each of them, the outcome would not 

have been much different under this new, ‘‘two-child policy.’’ 

1) First, I want to tell you about my friend and language teacher, Lydia. She 

translated for me during an ultrasound when I was pregnant. Hospitals do not usually allow women to see their ultrasound images, and despite having a master’s degree, Lydia had never seen an image of a baby in the womb. As she watched my 

child moving around inside me, she was moved to tears by the wonder of it. Lydia 

had one child and had already had one coerced abortion. A year later, when she became pregnant again, she and her husband ended up on our living room couch sobbing, because they did not want to end the life of their child. She and her husband 

made many brave and difficult choices, and through the support of other Chinese 

people they met through the China Life Alliance, came up with solutions to save 

the life of their unborn child. 

2) Next, I’d like to share with you the story of my friend Ivy. Ivy was a single 

college student when she discovered that she was pregnant by her married proVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
51 

fessor. The consequences for Ivy, when she chose to give birth to her daughter, and 

not abort or abandon her, were severe. Ivy was kicked out of college and her daughter was never issued a birth certificate, which meant she could not go to school, be 

treated at a hospital, or travel. She is one of the most courageous women I have 

ever met. Because she was a single mother, Ivy could not get a normal, government 

sanctioned job. She spent her daughter’s entire life getting paid ‘‘under the table’’ 

for the work she did. She did this with virtually no support, other than from a few 

people in her church. No man would marry her, because under that one child policy, 

they would not be able to have a child of their own. Now Ivy is one of the women 

who works in the China Life Alliance Network to help other women who find themselves single and pregnant. 

3) Population control like this can put a dramatic pressure on families who have 

a child born with a disability. My friend and I were involved with Grace, who had 

a baby girl born with Down syndrome. In their minority people group, they would 

be allowed to have two children. The pressure of feeling they needed to have both 

children be ‘‘healthy’’ and preferably male, in order to help earn income for the family, proved to be too much for them. Then Grace’s mother-in-law attempted to 

smother the infant when she was only 5 days old. Grace called my friend and we 

went to try to encourage the family, and to help them think through other options. 

Over and over, we heard both the parents, as well as the grandparents say ‘‘it 

wouldn’t be a big deal if we knew we could just have more kids!’’ But this one ‘‘imperfect’’ child would count as part of their quota, and the family economics couldn’t 

figure out how to make that work. 

It is hard for me to stay composed when I share these stories. I saw the tears, 

I felt their fears. I held their hands and I hold their stories in my heart. I want 

the world to see the reality of the heartbreak population control has brought to the 

people of this beautiful nation. While we rejoice for the few families who will now 

be able to have two children instead of one, I believe we must continue to speak 

up for the rights of the women, men, and children whose lives are so deeply affected 

by this policy. As we ask what we can do and how we can move forward, let us remember the stories of Lydia, Amy, and Grace. Let us honor their courage and bring 

about change that gives them hope. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. MOSHER

DECEMBER 3, 2015

A NEW DAWN OF REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM IN CHINA? 

Despite the new Two-Child Policy, the Chinese Communist Party remains as firmly 

in control of fertility as ever. 

INTRODUCTION

The Chinese Communist Party has decided that all Chinese couples will soon be 

allowed to have a second child, rather than being restricted to only one, as some 

now are. 

Foreign observers have generally greeted the apparent end of the one-child policy 

with euphoria, as if it somehow represents a new birth of reproductive freedom in 

China. Some have publicly commended the Chinese leadership as if they had decided to completely abolish a policy that has caused so much physical, emotional, 

and spiritual damage to the families in the nation. 

But the Chinese leadership has done no such thing. China is not backing away 

from draconian birth limits because Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has suddenly developed a conscience. No one in the senior leadership has ever lost any 

sleep over the 400 million unborn and newborn children their policy has killed over 

the past 35 years, or shed a tear for the hundreds of millions of young mothers forcibly aborted and sterilized over this same period, or had a moment’s regret for China’s tens of millions of missing baby girls. 

What keeps them up at night is the dawning realization that their misguided policy is crippling China’s future economic growth. For at least the past two years, China’s workforce has been shrinking. Last year, the potential workforce fell by 3.71 

million, a significant number even by China’s standards. At the same time, the oversixty population is exploding. According to U.N. projections, it is expected to more 

than double by 2050, reaching an astonishing 437 million. China is growing old before it grows rich, and the strains on China’s nascent pension programs will be enormous. 

52 

The parallels between China’s current demographic and economic malaise and Japan’s demographic and economic decline are striking. The Japanese economy has 

never really recovered from its ‘‘demographic recession’’ that began in the nineties, 

brought on by a shrinking workforce and a rapidly aging population. China may not 

recover either (as the leadership is now belatedly coming to understand) despite the 

move to a two-child policy. 

But there is another reason, even more fundamental, why I am not celebrating 

the end of the one-child policy. Regardless of whether Party leaders allow Chinese 

couples to have one, two, or even three children, the underlying policy has not—and 

probably will not—change. 

What underlying policy, you may ask? I am referring to the policy of ‘‘Planned 

Birth’’—jihua shengyu in Chinese—under which the Chinese state, rather than the 

Chinese people, decide how many children are to be born in China each year. 

It was none other than Chairman Mao himself, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, who first put the Planned Birth policy in place. The Great Helmsman, 

as he was known, decided way back in the 1950s that the five-year economic plans 

being drawn up by the Chinese Communist Party should control not just production, 

but reproduction. And they have, ever since. 

THE PLANNED BIRTH POLICY: COERCIVE FROM THE BEGINNING

Not long after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Party-State undertook to control the fertility of the Chinese people. A national Planned Birth program was in place and operational by 1953 which—except for periods of major political upheaval—has continued to the present day. Some imagine that these early 

days were a kind of ‘‘golden age’’ where women were merely ‘‘informed’’ about their 

‘‘reproductive choices,’’ and then left to use the drugs, devices, and surgeries of their 

choice. This has never been the case. As a general rule, the Chinese Party-State has 

never been content to simply provide education in, and encouragement to use, family planning methods. Rather, it has always viewed population as a mathematical 

equation to be solved, and been all-too-ready to resort to quotas and widespread 

compulsion when its proposed ‘‘solution’’ meets resistance from the masses. This 

tendency to use coercive measures is literally ‘‘built into’’ the Planned Birth program, not to mention into the Dictatorship of the Proletariat itself. When a oneparty dictatorship draws up a plan, the masses are expected to follow in lockstep. 

Opposition to the plan is seen as seditious, and is oftentimes even characterized as 

counterrevolutionary. The Planned Birth campaign is no exception. 

The first phase of this program of state-planned births ran until 1958, when it 

was derailed by the economic chaos of the Great Leap Forward and the mass famine 

that followed. The campaign resumed in 1962, but this second phase was barely 

under way before it was abruptly terminated in 1966 by the virtual civil war that 

was Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. After the People’s Liberation Army was 

called in to restore order in 1969, the campaign resumed. From that point forward, 

the Planned Birth campaign has continued more or less continuously to the present 

day. 

Strong-arm measures were already apparent in the first phase of the Planned 

Birth campaign. Although they were less noticeable in the second, truncated phase, 

they increased markedly during the third phase even before the start of the one-child 

policy. The two main strategies used by the Party during the early-to-mid 1970s— 

often linked in the Planned Birth propaganda of the time—were (1) to delay age at 

marriage and (2) to mandate that multiparous women wear IUDs. Although the 

state-run media remained largely silent on the question of coercion, there are credible reports that officials sometimes resorted to forced IUD insertions and forced 

sterilizations during this period. The end result was that the Chinese birth rate 

plummeted as the decade progressed. 

Coercion in the 1970s 

When the Party-State began to function again in 1969, it resumed its efforts to 

control China’s population. No longer would China’s children be allowed to run riot 

as Red Guards; instead, their numbers would be drastically restricted. The Central 

Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, in conjunction with the State Council, 

soon issued a ‘‘Directive on Promoting Planned Birth Conscientiously’’ which left no 

doubt about who would decide how many babies were to be born in China. It read: 

To promote Planned Birth in cities and in densely populated rural areas and 

to appropriately control the natural population growth rate so that the problem 

of births will gradually turn from a state of no planning to a state of planning 

is a confirmed policy of socialist construction in our country. (italics added) 

53 

The Party began by having its propaganda outlets attack the ‘‘feudal custom’’ of 

early marriage and repudiate what it called ‘‘the reactionary theory on marriage’’ 

that had supposedly been ‘‘advocated by Confucius and Mencius,’’ who were all-purpose whipping boys in those late Cultural Revolution days. Late marriage, on the 

other hand, was exalted as part of the ‘‘thought of Mao Zedong’’ and an important 

aspect of the ‘‘class struggle.’’ Nationalism was also used to whip up enthusiasm for 

birth planning by describing it as an essential part of a ‘‘patriotic health campaign.’’ 

As the Party-State apparently intended, this harsh ‘‘class struggle’’ campaign rhetoric inspired equally harsh measures on the part of lower-level officials to control 

births. The Shanghai Party Committee, for instance, designated the week of January 25, 1970 as ‘‘shock week’’ for the promotion of birth control and late marriage. 

During this week, the Committee ordered, the masses were to be ‘‘mobilized,’’ every 

family was to be visited by officials ‘‘in a penetrating and vigorous manner,’’ and 

‘‘remedial measures’’ were to be taken ‘‘whenever problems are discovered.’’ ‘‘Remedial measures,’’ of course, are a veiled reference to coercive practices such as forced 

IUD insertion and worse. Similar campaigns were soon being undertaken in other 

cities and in rural areas. 

In January 1971 the People’s Daily made the astonishing claim that ‘‘to promote 

with great effort late marriage and planned births and mobilize commune members 

to practice Planned Birth’’ was one of the ‘‘demands’’ of Chinese women.(italics 

added) In fact, there was considerable opposition to the de facto two-child policy that 

the Party-State was effectively imposing on the Chinese people by insisting that all 

women who had borne two children wear IUDs. But, in typical fashion, the PartyState blamed opposition on ‘‘class enemies’’ rather than admit to the existence of 

popular dissent. PRC President Liu Shaoqi, who was purged by Mao during the 

early stages of the Cultural Revolution, was a particular target. It was Liu’s ‘‘poisonous influence’’ that was responsible for the opposition to the planned birth campaign, went the official line, for he had spoken ‘‘disparagingly’’ of the Party-State’s 

efforts to regulate births. 

In contrast, planned birth was said to have been encouraged by the Great Helmsman himself. Direct statements by Chairman Mao Zedong on the policy are hard 

to find, although he was said to have remarked during the 1950s that childbearing 

in China was ‘‘in a state of anarchy.’’ Other than this we find his name invoked 

in a more general way: 

Planned Birth is a work of momentous significance promoted by great leader 

Chairman Mao and the Party Center and is an important measure for carrying 

out Chairman Mao’s great strategic plan, ‘‘Be prepared against war, be prepared against natural disasters, and do everything for the people.’’ . . . 

Thus, Planned Birth is an important thing bearing on the health of the nation, 

not a trifling matter concerning [only] an individual or a family. . . 

Elsewhere we find the People’s Daily asserting that Planned Birth work was ‘‘in accordance with Chairman Mao’s brilliant instruction that mankind has to control 

itself and to multiply in a planned way.’’ When local cadres proved reluctant to impose the Planned Birth policy on their fellow villagers, whom they lived among, 

Mao’s earlier remark that childbearing in China was ‘‘in a state of anarchy’’ was 

resurrected, but without attribution: 

Planned Birth is a social revolution aimed at changing the customs and habits, 

breaking the old and building the new. On the question of childbirth, to go over 

from a state of anarchy to the practice of planning will inevitably meet with resistance. Such resistance comes mainly from the sabotage of the class enemies 

and from the influence of old ideas and old concepts left over from several thousand years. (italics added) 

It is not surprising that most couples in China were upset, even angry, over the 

Party’s usurpation of their traditional prerogatives in childbearing. Rather than 

bowing to the popular will, however, the Chinese leadership doubled down. It 

launched a nationwide propaganda campaign which claimed that opposition to the 

new policy was being fomented by ‘‘class enemies’’ and ‘‘counterrevolutionaries,’’ 

even as it acknowledged that ‘‘feudal ideas’’ about childbearing were deeply etched 

in the minds of the Chinese people. By making opposition to the state’s Planned 

Birth policy tantamount to treason, the Party raised the stakes for those—both 

within Party circles and among the population at large—who might otherwise have 

opposed it. 

At the same time the Party’s propaganda machine went into overdrive to try and 

create at least the perception of popular support. Newspapers like the Guangzhou 

ribao insisted that state birth planning was not only in ‘‘the interests and aspirations of the masses of people,’’ but was in fact ‘‘an urgent demand of the broad 

masses of the people.’’ Not only that, but Planned Birth was ‘‘gradually becoming 

54 

the compelling demand and spontaneous action of the masses.’’ The Party’s 

broadsheet was in effect claiming that Chinese couples were so excited by the prospect of limiting their progeny that they were lining up and demanding to be 

contracepted, sterilized, and aborted. State-run radio broadcasts were similarly over 

the top. Radio Hangzhou breathlessly asserted that a large-scale sterilization and 

IUD-insertion campaign carried out locally in Zhejiang province had not only been 

a success, but had won ‘‘the acclaim of the masses.’’ Like the Guangzhou ribao, it 

made the highly dubious claim that ‘‘the spontaneity of the masses for practicing 

late marriage and Planned Birth control for the revolution is being continuously enhanced.’’ 

By August 1974 the Chinese Party-State was ready to announce to the world, 

through its official news agency, XINHUA, that the country’s Planned Birth policy 

had ‘‘achieved initial success.’’ Anticipating that the international community might 

suspect that this ‘‘success’’ had been achieved through coercion, XINHUA’s Englishlanguage dispatches insisted that Chinese families had merely been ‘‘advised to 

have no more than two children’’ and that the Planned Birth policy was being carried out ‘‘on a voluntary basis under state guidance,’’ Later that month, that same 

chilling line—that the policy followed the principle of ‘‘voluntary with state guidance’’—was repeated in the English language journal Beijing Review. How the 

Planned Birth policy could be ‘‘voluntary’’ when couples were expected to follow 

‘‘state guidance’’ in bearing children was not explained. Later, I was to witness the 

Party’s version of ‘‘voluntarism’’ in action as groups of three or four officials would 

‘‘guide’’ distraught pregnant mothers to a local clinic for ‘‘voluntary’’ second- and 

third-trimester abortions. 

These several articles also asserted that oral contraceptives, IUDs, and sterilization were generally accepted, that the program was now being spread to the countryside, and that it was there meeting with increasing success. In February 1975 

XINHUA touted one of these supposed successes: Nangong county, located in Hebei 

province, had reportedly seen its population growth rate drop by 74% in the two 

years since the policy had been implemented in 1973. ‘‘Wherever you go [in the 

county],’’ the official news agency boasted, ‘‘you can hear people saying ‘Planned 

Birth is good.’’’ The policy had become ‘‘deeply embedded in the hearts of the people 

throughout the county,’’ making Nangong a ‘‘model’’ for other counties to emulate. 

In spite of the fact that, according to Party propagandists, the enthusiasm of the 

masses over this new policy knew no bounds, local radio broadcasts from this time 

suggest that there was considerable resistance both from cadres and locals in large 

parts of the country. Why else would these broadcasts urge local cadres to ‘‘strengthen leadership’’ over the work, grasp it ‘‘firmly and well,’’ ‘‘mobilize the masses,’’ and 

make the Planned Birth campaign a top priority? Why else would they need to 

‘‘grasp the class struggle’’ and the struggle between the ‘‘two lines’’ (revolutionary 

and reactionary) in order to ‘‘enhance the spontaneity’’ of the cadres and the 

masses? Above all, why else would they be told that they must ‘‘consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat,’’ an ominous phrase which meant that that they were 

now free to use the mailed fist of state power to crush any and all opposition to 

the Planned Birth policy of the Party? Still, as some reports noted, the ‘‘fierce struggle between the two classes’’ in planned birth work continued, and ‘‘sabotage’’ by 

class enemies remained a problem. All localities reported ‘‘successes’’ in the efforts 

to implement the policy—they could hardly do otherwise—but not a few admitted 

that, despite their ‘‘successes,’’ the work was ‘‘uneven’’ and they had been unable 

to meet the ‘‘demands’’ (i.e., targets and quotas) laid out by the Party. 

The Planned Birth campaign rhetoric of the early 1970s reflected the harsh, aggressive tone of the Cultural Revolution, a time when every statement of the authorities was freighted with ideological overtones, and every act charged with political menace. This was a time when Lin Biao, Vice Chairman of the CCP and Chairman Mao’s designated successor, attempted to flee Mao’s wrath but died when the 

plane he had commandeered crashed in Outer Mongolia. It was a time when Mao’s 

third wife, Jiang Qing, an ambitious woman who had arrogated more and more 

power to herself as Mao slipped into his dotage, made the planned birth policy a 

centerpiece of the continuing Cultural Revolution. 

Lin Biao’s name was quickly added to the political invective of the day. Along 

with his fellow ‘‘counterrevolutionary’’ Liu Shaoqi, and the long-dead ‘‘reactionaries’’ 

Confucius and Mencius, Lin was accused of having ‘‘sabotaged’’ the Planned Birth 

campaign. Every provincial, county, and commune-level cadre in China was ordered 

to help expose his ‘‘towering crimes’’ against the campaign and publicly criticize 

him. Since there was absolutely no evidence that he did any such thing, the already 

strident Planned Birth propaganda of the time now began to read like the paranoid 

ravings of a mad political zealot: 

55 

We must seriously organize the masses to study the theory of the dictatorship 

of the proletariat, implement and propagate Chairman Mao’s instructions and 

the Party’s policy on Planned Birth and grasp well the struggle between two 

lines and two kinds of ideology on Planned Birth work. We must criticize the 

reactionary fallacies on the question of family, marriage, and childbearing 

preached by Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, and Confucius and Mencius. . . We must 

eradicate their poison. We must enhance the masses’ spontaneity for practicing 

late marriage and Planned Birth. We must train a large number of activists in 

planned birth work and give full play to the backbone and vanguard role of revolutionary cadres, Party members, China Youth League members, and militiamen. 

In other words, all of the organizations controlled by the Party-State were to be 

enlisted into the struggle to impose the Planned Birth policy on ‘‘the masses.’’ And 

‘‘the masses’’ were going to like it—‘‘spontaneously’’ of course—or else. Or again: 

To practice Planned Birth is a profound revolution in the ideological sphere. 

To carry out this ideological revolution for ‘getting rid of the old and establishing the new’ and ‘changing existing habits and customs,’ we must thoroughly break away from the traditional relations of ownership [of children], the 

traditional concepts, and eradicate the old ideas and habits on the issue of marriage and parenthood left behind over the past several thousand years. Therefore, to make a success of Planned Birth work is an important aspect of consolidating and developing the victorious achievements of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The remnant poison of the reactionary fallacies spread by 

Confucius and Mencius. . . is very extensive and their influence is extremely 

deep. Bourgeois rights also are reflected in the issues of marriage and parenthood. The class enemies also try by every way possible to carry out sabotage. 

Therefore, in order to institute Planned Birth, we must also take the class 

struggle as the key link, persist in the Party’s basic line, seriously study the 

theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, persist in exercising all-around proletarian dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, firmly grasp the struggle between 

two classes, two lines, and two kinds of ideology in marriage and parenthood, 

develop revolutionary mass criticism deeply and protractedly, criticize thoroughly the reactionary fallacies advocated by Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, Confucius, 

and Mencius on the issue of the family, marriage, and parenthood, and eradicate their remnant poison. 

In Junan Commune, located in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province, 

where I did my original field research in China, these were the years in which virtually every women of childbearing age with three or more living children was either inserted with an IUD, or given a tubal ligation. Interviews with local women 

who had been sterilized under duress convinced me that local cadres had followed 

their orders to the letter. They had indeed ‘‘firmly grasped the struggle between the 

two lines’’ and ensured that ‘‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’’ had carried the day. 

The ‘‘reactionary fallacy’’ that couples could have as many children as they wanted 

was in retreat, replaced by the new Party line: the Chinese Communist Party, and 

the state apparatus that it controlled, would henceforth be in charge of regulating 

births under a state plan. 

CHILDBEARING UNDER A STATE PLAN WILL CONTINUE

This is why the shift to a two-child policy is occurring as part of the next fiveyear plan, approved at the latest meeting of the CCP Central Committee. The official communique about the meeting, released by China’s official Xinhua News Agency on October 29th, made clear that in the 13th Five-Year Economic Plan, China’s 

leaders had decided to ramp up both production and reproduction. 

The communique itself, written in the almost unreadable pastiche of slogans that 

the Party resorts to on such occasions, read: ‘‘Promote the balanced development of 

the population; resolutely carry out the basic policy of Planned Births; thoroughly 

implement the policy of each couple birthing two children; actively begin to address 

the aging of the population.’’ 

Of course it is already far too late to ‘‘rebalance’’ the population in order to stop 

the rapid ‘‘aging of the population.’’ Those trends are already baked into the demographic cake, as it were. No spike in planned births, however robust, is going to 

offset the hundreds of millions of ‘‘planned’’ deaths that preceded it. 

Moreover, it is doubtful whether the new policy will have much of an impact at 

all. When the one-child policy has been relaxed in the past—first for rural couples 

whose first child was a girl, then for all rural couples, then for urban couples where 

both the husband and wife were only children—the results have been 

underwhelming. 

56 

The last tweaking of the Planned Birth policy, which occurred just two years ago, 

was particularly disappointing to Party leaders hoping for a baby boomlet. The government had ‘‘announced’’ that couples in which only one spouse was an only child 

would be allowed two children, and planned for 20 million births in 2014. Only 16.9 

million babies actually materialized. And out of 11 million couples eligible to have 

a second child, only 1.45 million had applied for a ‘‘permit’’ by May of this year. 

These figures suggest that, at least among China’s urban population, millions of 

couples are not eagerly waiting to fill the maternity wards. Forty years of anti-natal, 

anti-child propaganda has left its mark on the Chinese psyche. Few Chinese young 

people, who are themselves only children (and often the children of only children), 

are inclined to be generous when it comes to having children of their own. They 

would rather spend their limited incomes on themselves than, say, disposable diapers. 

The Chinese are not alone in having below-replacement fertility. Every developed 

Asian country, from Japan and South Korea, to Taiwan and Singapore, is suffering 

from the same demographic malaise. The difference is that these countries grew rich 

before they began growing old. China, as a result of its misguided one-child policy, 

is growing old before it is rich. 

What will the China’s leaders do if, as now appears likely, the Chinese people do 

not procreate up to plan? 

At present couples are permitted to have a second child, but I don’t expect the 

matter to end there. Soon they will be ‘‘encouraged,’’ then ‘‘motivated’’ and finally 

‘‘ordered’’ to bear children. A government bent on regulating its population under 

a state plan will do whatever necessary to ‘‘produce’’ the number of children it has 

ordered reproduced. 

If this prediction sounds, well, a little overwrought, consider what China has been 

doing to young, pregnant mothers for the better part of two generations now. 

At the outset of the one-child policy, Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping ordered 

his officials to ‘‘Use whatever means you must’’ to force the birthrate down. ‘‘With 

the support of the Communist Party, you have nothing to fear,’’ he assured them. 

They took him at his word, and women were rounded up en masse to be aborted, 

sterilized, or contracepted. 

Even today, these kinds of abuses continue. As recently as two months ago, a 

mother was forced to sacrifice the life of her unborn child to save her husband’s job. 

She was eight months pregnant. Not long before, a Shaanxi woman was taken by 

force from her home by a gang of Planned Birth officials and given an abortion. She 

was seven months pregnant, according to reports from the Guardian. 

The same Party officials who have been responsible for decades of forced abortions 

and sterilizations would presumably have no qualms enforcing mandatory pregnancy on young women, if they were ordered to do so. 

An example of just this kind of coercive pro-natal policy comes from neighboring 

North Korea, one of the most rigidly controlled countries on earth. Dictator Kim 

Jong-un, worried about the country’s falling birth rate, has just ordered ob-gyns to 

stop inserting IUDs, and has declared that abortion will henceforth be illegal. 

If the higher birthrate called for by China’s new Planned Birth policy can not be 

achieved voluntarily, China’s leaders may take similar actions. Childbearing may 

become mandatory. Regular pelvic examinations will be instituted to monitor menstrual cycles and plan pregnancies. Abortion may be forbidden. Such measures, long 

in place in China to restrict childbearing, may be instituted to increase the number 

of children born. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. China’s leaders should abandon the Planned Birth policy altogether. They 

should allow couples to freely choose the number and spacing of their children, and 

have as many, or as few, as they desire. 

2. China’s leaders should respect the consensus of the international community 

as expressed in the policy of the UN Population Fund, which affirms that couples 

enjoy the right to responsibly decide the number and spacing of their children. 

3. The National Health and Planned Birth Commission (NHPBC), created 

in 2013 from the merger of the Ministry of Health and the National Population and 

Planned Birth Commission, should revert to its former role as a Ministry of Health, 

and its Planned Birth arm abolished. 

4. Only if these reforms are undertaken will forced abortions and forced sterilizations, which have characterized China’s Planned Birth policy from the beginning, 

come to an end. 

57 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM

NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

DECEMBER 3, 2015

The Chinese government has spent the past 35 years telling couples what their 

families must look like. 

Thirty-five years of state sponsored violence against women including coerced 

abortions and involuntary sterilizations in the name of population control. 

Thirty-five years of viewing children as ‘‘excess baggage’’ from the day they are 

conceived, particularly the girl child. 

Thirty-five years or wasting precious human potential. 

And, thirty-five years of committing massive crimes against women and children 

enabled by pro-abortion non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United 

Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). 

Despite the platitude and applause by some being heaped on China’s announced 

‘‘Two-Child Policy’’—the proposal doesn’t change the basic structure of coercive population control and it is not some major reversal of policy to be lauded. And this 

so called reform isn’t a done deal yet. According to world famous demographer Dr. 

Nichoals Eberstadt, who will testify today, the ‘‘One-Child Policy’’ may become a 

‘‘Two-Child Policy’’ but the coercive population control apparatus remains unchanged. 

Dr. Eberstadt says, ‘‘To be clear: that shift has not yet taken place. To the contrary: just days after the October 29 announcement, China’s National Health and 

Family Planning Commission, which oversees the population program, emphasized 

that the new norms were not yet ‘‘valid’’ and described the Two-Child Policy as a 

‘‘proposal,’’ indicating furthermore that this proposal would have to be approved by 

Beijing’s legislature next year before it might eventually be enacted.’’ 

That said, the ‘‘Two-Child Policy’’ may allow for more births—if ‘‘enacted’’ at some 

future date—but it does not remove the pernicious incentives given to local officials 

to pressure or even force mothers to abort a child if the birth hasn’t been approved 

by the state and is/or is the couple’s third. Chinese families are still not free to determine the size of their own families. Nor does this policy erase the enormous physical and psychological damage imposed on women done by three and a half decades 

of highly coercive birth limitations. 

We should not be applauding China’s policy, we should be insisting they abolish 

all birth limits—forever. 

Chen Guangcheng, the famous Chinese legal advocate, and human rights champion, calls China’s population control polices ‘‘genocide.’’ He calls for an international tribunal to vigorously investigate these crimes against humanity. And Mr. 

Chen calls on the Obama Administration to enforce existing U.S. law and bar Chinese officials associated with the policy from entry to the United States—I wrote 

that law, and the Obama Administration has completely failed to enforce and implement its provisions. 

The Chinese government is not the only one culpable in these heinous crimes 

against women and children. The UN Population Fund helped fund birth restrictions, fund forced abortions, and a massive and coercive family planning bureaucracy. Several years ago, I had a face to face meeting in Beijing with Peng Peiyun, 

the bureaucrat in charge of China’s draconian population program. Madame Peng 

repeatedly told me repeatedly that my concerns were unfounded and repeatedly said 

that UNFPA found no coercion whatsoever—a complete whitewash. 

The UNFPA whitewashed China’s crimes for decades and continues to do so 

today. On their website, the UNFPA justifies its history in China, saying that they 

‘‘were tasked by the Executive Committee’’ to help China and had to ‘‘engage with 

China as a sovereign nation.’’ 

Since 1994, the UNFPA claims that their efforts have focused on getting China 

to adopt a ‘‘rights-based approach’’ to family planning, saying they opposed ‘‘coercion, violence, forced abortion, and sterilization as a violation of basic human 

rights.’’ 

Yet, there is no evidence to show their efforts made one bit of difference in changing China’s policies. No evidence that UNFPA officials intervened to stop coercion 

and violence. For the past three and half decades, UNFPA funding gave China’s 

policies an international stamp of approval. 

The UNFPA is complicit in China’s coercive population control policies. The 

United States and others who helped fund the UNFPA programs in China are also 

complicit. It is a dark and bloody stain that cannot be washed away. 

I hope China will abolish all aspects of its horrendous birth control policy as soon 

as possible and compensate its victims. For me and many others opposed to this polVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
58 

icy, it is a matter of justice and human rights. For the Chinese government, this 

is a matter of economic survival. 

China’s government says it is instituting a ‘‘Two-Child Policy’’ to stem the twin 

demographic time bombs of a rapidly aging population and millions of men unable 

to find wives, but this new policy is unlikely to solve these problems. 

As the Economist has noted, by 2025, nearly 1 in 4 Chinese citizens will be over 

the age of 60. At the same time, China’s working-age population has shrunk in each 

of the past three years. These factors are likely to hurt not only government balance 

sheets but also economic growth in China. This should be of particular concern to 

the Chinese Communist Party, as economic growth is the primary source of their 

ill begotten legitimacy. 

The minimal policy change announced in October will do little to address the 

three decade decimation of female population. Approximately 40 million women and 

girls—perhaps millions more—are missing from the population—a policy that can 

only be accurately described as gendercide. The extermination of the girl child in 

society simply because she happens to be a girl. 

The lack of girls has led to a dramatically skewed gender ratio. An estimated 30 

million young men who will be unable to find wives in the coming decades. 

The Chinese government should be concerned—as should China’s neighbors and 

the international community—of the consequences of 30 million men, unable to find 

companionship, unable to start families, and coming of age precisely at the time 

that China’s economy is creating fewer jobs to employ them. That is a ticking time 

bomb with the potential of dramatic consequences. 

We continue to see increased human trafficking for forced marriages and sexual 

slavery. NGOs working in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma have all reported an increase in trafficking of women and girls into China in recent years. Even if China 

ends its birth restrictions, given the current demographics, this problem of a shortage of women in China will only get worse in the coming decade. 

In the long line of Chinese Communist Party mistakes, the brutal enforcement of 

population control may be one of the deadliest and most hated. The ‘‘Two-Child Policy’’ recently announced does little to fundamentally change the past and should not 

be celebrated. 

The international community, led by the United States, must insist that China 

abolish all birth restrictions, dismantle its family planning apparatus, compensate 

the victims of forced abortions and sterilizations, raise the legal and inheritance status of girls, and permanently close a dark and deadly chapter in Chinese history. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA; 

COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

DECEMBER 3, 2015

For over three decades, China’s barbaric One-Child Policy condemned millions of 

unwanted or ‘‘surplus’’ Chinese girls to abortion, infanticide, abandonment and 

human trafficking. 

Following China’s recent announcement that it is adopting a universal two-child 

policy, media reports profiled individual Chinese families and the trauma they’ve 

experienced at the hands of their own government: women still grieving the child 

they were robbed of, parents adrift after losing the only child the government allowed them to have, families who are too old to take advantage of this policy 

change. Sadly, these types of stories will continue under the new policy. 

Ultimately, China’s new two-child policy is as indefensible and inhumane as the 

one-child policy it replaces. In fact, China’s new policy should be known as the 

‘‘forced abortion of child #3’’ policy. China needs to recognize that its problem isn’t 

that it has too many innocent children; it’s that they have too many repressive communist adults with blood all over their clenched iron fists. 

It would be a mistake to assume this change in any way reflects a newfound respect for human rights by Beijing. It is still a population control policy and still, 

at its heart, repressive. When couples conceive a third child, the Chinese government will force them to eliminate him or her, by any means necessary. There are 

also doubts about those second children conceived in the months between the policy 

announcement and its ultimate implementation at the provincial level. China’s vast 

population control apparatus will continue to exist. Birth permits will still be required. And second children, already born in violation of the previous policy will 

continue to face tremendous challenges—denied the most basic rights of Chinese 

citizenship. 

59 

A government that possesses such little regard for its own people—parents and 

children alike – cannot be relied upon to adhere to other international norms. 

This is China’s shameful legacy. According to the latest census, men outnumber 

women by at least 33 million. Estimates suggest that there will be a surplus of 40– 

50 million bachelors in China through the mid-to late 21st century. 

Couples who have violated the one-child policy have historically faced a variety 

of punishments, from fines and the loss of employment to forced abortions and sterilizations. The Annual Report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

(CECC), which I co-chair, noted that last year local governments directed officials 

to punish non-compliance with the one-child policy with heavy fines termed ‘‘social 

compensation fees,’’ which compel many couples to choose between undergoing an 

unwanted abortion and incurring a fine much greater than the average annual income of the locality. This is a ‘‘choice’’ no parent should have to make. 

Today, I joined with CECC Chairman, Representative Chris Smith in urging Secretary of State John Kerry to provide an update on the administration’s implementation of the ‘‘Girls Count Act’’, which was signed into law on June 12. As this law’s 

chief sponsor in the Senate, I was motivated by the fact that every year approximately 51 million children under the age of five are not registered at birth, most 

of whom are girls, leaving them susceptible to marginalization and exploitation. 

This law directs current U.S. foreign assistance programming to support the rights 

of women and girls in developing countries by working to establish birth registries 

in their countries. There is a massive problem regarding children for whom no official records exist because they were not registered at birth—this is, of course, especially true in China. The legislation also prioritizes a variety of rule of law programs 

intended to raise the legal and financial status of girls in order to help address the 

cultural and financial rationale for sex-selective abortions. Again, this component 

has particular relevance to China. 

As a father of four, I believe it is vital that the United States continues advocating for the complete elimination of government-forced population planning as 

well as the fundamental rights of all Chinese citizens, including the unborn, to live 

up to their God-given potential. The One-Child Policy does not need to be changed; 

it needs to be eliminated entirely. Ultimately, I believe the unborn children we are 

fighting for will form a new generation of Chinese children who will lead its transition to a peaceful and democratic nation. China’s children—all of them—represent 

the country’s best hopes for the future, not the fading crony communists fighting 

to eliminate them. 

60 

1Shiwei Liu et al., ‘‘An integrated national mortality surveillance system for death registration and mortality surveillance, China.’’ World Health Organization 94, no. 28 (2016): 46–57, 

www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/94/1/15–153148.pdf. 2 Yining Peng, ‘‘13m unregistered people to be given hukou recognition,’’ China Daily, November 25, 2015, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015–11/25/content—22516606.htm 3 United States Census Bureau, International Data Base, ‘‘Mid-year population by single year 

age groups,’’ available at: http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/ 

informationGateway.php 4Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations 

Secretariat, World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/ 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

HOW MANY ‘‘MISSING FEMALES’’ FOR CHINA’S ONE CHILD POLICY ERA (1981–2015)? 

SOME APPROXIMATE ILLUSTRATIVE CALCULATIONS

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

HENRY HENDY CHAIR IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

eberstadt@aei.org 

In this note we offer a few simple illustrative calculations that should help to 

bound the range of plausible estimates for the size of the population of ‘‘missing 

girls and women’’ from the cohorts born during the One Child Policy era in China 

(1980–2015). 

The emphasis is on ‘simple’ here—what we show below are a few benchmark calculations. 

A more sophisticated set of estimates could be derived from formal, and more 

methodologically sophisticated, demographic projections. We offer simpler calculations here because the additional value from a more elegant set of projections is not 

self-evident, given the magnitudes of the uncertainties in officially reported Chinese 

data. 

In a world with perfect information, we could provide an approximate estimate 

of the total ‘‘missing females’’ from the One Child Policy era as a differential—the 

sum total of the gap between the number of girls and women actually enumerated 

on the one hand, and the ‘‘expected’’ number of girls and women we would predict 

to be counted under ‘‘normal’’ conditions on the other. Note that there are assumptions—about the ‘‘normal’’ sex ratio at birth and ‘‘normal’’ mortality trends for the 

groups in question, among other things—in such calculations, and they affect the 

results even under conditions of perfect information. But the effect on results would 

be relatively small: such differences would matter a lot to demographers, of course, 

but they probably would not really matter that much to people who simply wanted 

a ‘‘ball park’’ approximation of the magnitude of this problem. 

For better or worse, Chinese demographic data today are far from perfect. Vital 

registration of births and deaths is not yet complete or even near-complete.1 China’s 

most recent national population count was conducted in 2010, and as with earlier 

Chinese censuses in the One Child Era, an under-counting of children and youth 

appears to have taken place. This should not be surprising: in addition to the perennial potential for undercounts that besets all census exercises, Beijing has created 

special additional incentives for misrepresenting the numbers of children and youth 

to enumerators. Parents might wish to hide their true number of children because 

they had an ‘‘out of quota’’ birth, for example, or because they wanted another 

chance for a son. Young adults could be invisible to enumerators if they began life 

as ‘‘hidden children’’ and were never assigned hukou registration and identification 

papers. No one knows just how many Chinese today exist outside the state’s hukou 

registration system, but recently authorities in Beijing indicated they believed China’s non-hukou population might total 13 million persons.2

Rather than base our estimate of missing females on official Chinese demographic 

as reported, we will work instead with the reconstructions and projections offered 

by independent demographic experts. The two foremost sources for such work are 

the US Bureau of the Census, through its continually updated International Data 

Base,3 and the United Nations Population Division, through its typically biennial 

‘‘World Population Prospects’’ series.4 Both of these teams released their latest estiVerDate Mar 15 2010 18:09 Apr 21, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98715.TXT DEIDRE
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5Thomas Scharping, Table 32 in Birth Control in China 1949–2000: Population policy and demographic development (New York: Routledge, 2013). 6 A technical demographic point: the sex ratio at birth and the sex ratio of babies less than 

one year of age are not identical quantities because infant mortality rates may differ by sex and 

usually do, typically being higher for boys than girls. China did not report sex ratios at birth 

in its 1953 and 1964 census counts and we do not deal with SRBs in this note, as sex ratios 

for each age group afford us the simple approach we use in this note. 

A second and somewhat more technical point concerns the possible relationship between mortality levels and age 0 sex ratio in a hypothetically ‘‘normal’’ China. In 1953 and 1964, when 

China’s first two censuses were conducted, China was a high mortality society—but mortality 

levels were much lower in the China of the One Child Policy era. Some might surmise that improvements in mortality might affect China’s sex ratio at age 0 and take the society outside of 

the range of sex ratios we have stipulated here. While recognizing this theoretical possibility, 

we do not attempt to deal with such counterfactuals in this note. 

mates and projections for China in the summer of 2015, so we are working here 

with fairly up-to-date assessments of China’s demographic profile. 

The Census Bureau and the UN Population Division reconstructions of China’s 

2010 population profile can be contrasted with China’s officially released 2010 census returns. [SEE TABLES 1 AND 2] By convention, the Census Bureau and UN 

Population Division estimates are for midyear (July 1); for its part, China’s 2010 

census used November 1 as its ‘‘hour zero.’’ All other things being equal, this should 

mean that the totals from the official Chinese count would be a little higher than 

the Census Bureau and UN Population Division estimates, due to intervening population growth. But as we can see, both the Census Bureau estimates and the UN 

Population Division estimates conclude there was a substantial undercounting of 

China’s younger population in 2010. By the Census Bureau’s reconstructions, the 

Chinese 2010 census undercounted the country’s under-30 population (i.e., the persons born since 1980) by almost 24 million—over 15 million males and over 8 million females. By the UN Population Division’s reckoning, the undercount would have 

been over 20 million: more than 13 million males and nearly 7 million females. The 

Census Bureau and UNPD reconstructions both conclude that the degree of 

undercount varied not only by sex, but also by year of birth—but they do not agree 

entirely amongst themselves on the extent of under-enumeration by age and sex for 

China’s younger population. These two reconstructions thus reflect somewhat different sets of expert assumptions about China’s true fertility and mortality patterns. 

The One Child Policy Era was formally inaugurated in September 1980, with an 

open letter by the Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party in People’s 

Daily. In October 2015, a statement from the Central Committee via Xinhua News 

Agency announced that the One Child Policy would be shelved. For the purposes 

of our calculations, we treat the One Child Policy Era as 1980–2015 (even though 

it would of course be possible to date the policy as beginning somewhat earlier, and 

also extending later—after all, the nationwide termination of the policy thus far has 

only been announced, not actually implemented). 

In their population projections for 2015 for China, both the Census Bureau and 

the UN Population Division estimate the total male population from birthyears 

1980–2015 at a bit over 352 million, and both place the total female population from 

birthyears 1980–2015 a little above 316 million. These aggregates are strikingly 

similar (though if we were to dig a little deeper we would see some discrepancies 

in the projections for each birthyear). 

Both series indicate a gap of about 36 million between males and females born 

during the One Child Policy era. Some of this difference, however, can be considered 

natural, insofar as our species is biologically programmed to produce slightly more 

male than female offspring. How much of this gap is ‘‘normal’’, and how much 

should be regarded as ‘‘missing females’’ ? 

We can illustrate a plausible range of rough approximations for total numbers of 

‘‘missing females’’ from the 1980–2015 birth cohorts with three scenarios, applied 

to both the Census Bureau and the UN Population Division projections: 1) the sex 

ratio in China should be 105 males per 100 females for ages 0 through 35; 2) the 

sex ratio should be 103 males per 100 females for ages 0 through 35; and 3) the 

sex ratio in China should be 105 males for every 100 females at age 0 (i.e. for the 

group that has not yet reached its first birthday) but should gradually decline to 

103 males per 100 females at age 35. 

These scenarios are perforce arbitrary, but they are not entirely unreasonable. In 

China’s 1953 and 1964 censuses—the national population counts, that is to say, before the dawn of the One Child Policy—the enumerated sex ratios for China’s babies 

less than one year of age were 104.9 and 103.8, respectively 5—i.e., they fell between 

103 and 105 for age group 0.6

62 

7 Human Mortality Database, University of California, Berkeley and Max Planck Institute for 

Demographic Research, Taiwan Data Series, http://www.mortality.org/cgi-bin/hmd/country.php?cntr=TWN&level=1 8Statistical Bureau of the Republic of China (Taiwan), ‘‘Latest Indicators,’’ http:// 

eng.stat.gov.tw/point.asp?index=9. 

If we believed survival schedules for males and females were the same from 0 

through 35, and that differential migration played no role in shaping China’s sex 

ratios (as we will indeed assume throughout this exercise), then boundaries for the 

size of the ‘‘missing females’’ group might be established by calculating how many 

babies, girls and women should be expected at a sex ratio of 103 or 105, given the 

number of males estimated from each birthyear, subtracting the actually estimated 

number of females in question, and summing the differences for all birthyears in 

question. 

These were the assumptions for scenarios 1 and 2. But of course in almost all contemporary populations, women can expect to live longer than men—and in most societies today female survival schedules are more favorable than male schedules for 

the 0–35 period. 

Scenario 3 is an effort to take into account the reality of male-female differentials 

in mortality. We can get a sense of the magnitude of the relevant differentials from 

the Human Mortality Database 7 estimates of mortality patterns for Taiwan in the 

year 1980—i.e., for a culturally Chinese population before the dawn of sex-selective 

abortion, and where severe discrimination against girls and women was not in force. 

On survival trajectories from that year, 96.7% of Taiwanese females could expect 

to live to age 35—as against 94.5% of Taiwanese men. Differential mortality, in 

other words, would have reduced the sex ratio by a bit more than two percentage 

points by age 35. (China’s overall life expectancy at birth today is believed to be a 

few years higher than was Taiwan’s in 1980 but we may still want to use this two 

percentage point differential, not least for the sake of simplicity.) Consequently, our 

scenario 3 begins with a sex ratio of 105 males per 100 females at 0 and ends with 

a sex ratio of 103 males per 100 females at age 35, interpolating the sex ratio for 

intervening ages. 

Table 3 displays the results of these calculations. [SEE TABLE 3] Under scenario 

1 (a sex ratio of 105 at all ages), we would calculate the ‘‘missing female’’ total for 

the One Child Policy era to amount to around 19–20 million. Under scenario 2 (a 

sex ratio of 103 at all ages) the ‘‘missing female’’ total would be calculated at 

around26 million. Under scenario 3 (a sex ratio of 105 for those not year one year 

of age, gradually shifting to 103 by age 35), the ‘‘missing female’’ total would be calculated at around 23 million. 

Our central estimate for the number of ‘‘missing females’’ from the One Child Policy era (1980–2015) is thus around 23 million—although, as we have just seen, alternative assumptions could result in estimates a few million higher or a few million 

lower. More detailed and sophisticated approaches might of course propose more 

precise numerical answers to the question in the title of this note—but given the 

significant uncertainties inherent in the Chinese data upon which such approaches 

would have to rely, the risk of false precision would be high. 

By way of perspective on our calculations: our figures would be roughly in the 

same league as the total population for Taiwan (23.5 million as of July 2015, according to the Republic of China Statistical Bureau).8

Finally: note that our calculations scale the dimensions of the ‘‘missing women’’ 

problem in relation to ‘‘existing men’’. We have no way of knowing just how many 

additional males would have been born in China over the past three and a half decades absent population control. This is arguably an additional aspect to the ‘‘missing 

women’’ question—but one we have no readily reliable method for addressing. 

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[From the Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2015] 

CHINA’S NEW TWO-CHILD POLICY AND THE FATAL CONCEIT

(By Nicholas Eberstadt) 

It is the latest twist in the most ambitious and ruthless social-engineering program ever undertaken by a modern state: Beijing announced Thursday that the Chinese Communist Party will officially abandon its one-child policy. Yet it has no 

plans to relinquish authority over its subjects’ birth patterns; rather, Beijing has 

simply changed the ration. Now two children per family will be permitted. 

The first partial relaxation came two years ago, when Chinese authorities decreed 

that spouses who were both an only child would be allowed to have two children. 

This fine-tuning was expected to result in several million additional births—but 

only a fraction of that number of couples even applied for a second ration coupon. 

Now, after 31⁄2 decades of attempted one-child enforcement, the government can no 

longer ignore that its policy of forcible population control has been a disaster. As 

the Communist Party prepares for its 13th five-year plan, it must survey what its 

quest to remold the Chinese family has wrought. 

The one-child mandate is the single greatest social-policy error in human history. 

After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, his legatees were horrified to discover how little 

they had inherited. Despite almost three decades of ‘‘socialist construction,’’ China 

was still overwhelmingly rural and desperately poor. More than 97% of the country 

lived below the World Bank’s notional $1.25 a day threshold for absolute poverty, 

according to recent Chinese estimates. With a population still rapidly growing, 

China seemed on the brink of losing the race between mouths and food. 

In their attempt to process these facts, Chinese leaders stumbled into an elementary neo-Malthusian misdiagnosis. Rather than focus solely on undoing the crushing 

inefficiencies of their Maoist economy, they blamed abysmal productivity on the 

childbearing patterns of their subjects. The outcome was involuntary birth control, 

promulgated through a vast scheme of quotas and an army of family-planning 

agents. 

This was Socialist ‘‘scientism’’—ideology masquerading as science—of the highest 

order. The broad outline was established on calculations by a Moscow-minted engineer in China’s nuclear program. These computations bore no relation to the actual 

ways in which Chinese men and women thought about family life. As soon as the 

policy was rolled out in 1980 and 1981, it collided with human realities. 

First came alarming reports that female infanticide, an ancient practice, had once 

again erupted throughout the countryside. China’s 1982 census, released some years 

later, showed an unnatural imbalance in the sex ratio for birth-year 1981 on the 

order of hundreds of thousands of missing baby girls. 

Infanticide was then replaced by mass sex-selective abortion, made possible in the 

late 1980s by increased rural access to ultrasound machines. China’s sex ratio 

climbed to nearly 120 baby boys for every 100 baby girls, where it plateaued around 

2000. Although a war against baby girls is evident in other countries—India and 

Taiwan among them—leading Chinese demographers have suggested that half or 

more of China’s imbalance may directly result from the one-child policy. 

The precise long-term effects have yet to be accurately estimated. Chinese authorities claim that the country has 400 million fewer people due to the one-child 

policy, because they have overseen that many abortions. But this misleading metric 

ignores the distinction between forced and voluntary abortions. 

To the extent that the policy has achieved its objective, it magnified the demographic problems that Communist planners are apparently only now beginning to 

acknowledge. Fertility levels in urban China were already well below replacement 

by 1980. Today the country is on track to go gray at a shocking tempo. Two years 

ago, working-age manpower began to decline, according to Chinese authorities. The 

only close comparator is post-bubble Japan: not a cheering vision for what remains 

a relatively poor society. 

And China’s cities are now producing a new family type utterly unfamiliar to Chinese history: only children begotten by only children. They have no siblings, cousins, 

uncles or aunts, only ancestors (and perhaps, one day, descendants). But in a lowtrust society, extended social networks, known in Chinese as guanxi, play a vital 

economic role. They reduce uncertainty and transaction costs by providing the reassurance supplied elsewhere by rule of law and transparency. How will Chinese economic performance be affected by the atrophy of the extended family? 

Beijing’s latest adjustments to population plans seem to have been prompted by 

economic concerns, yet these changes will have only modest demographic repercussions. Like other East Asian locales without forced population control, the average 

desired family size in China appears to be far below replacement. Beijing also can’t 

67 

rely on immigration for demographic help. Even modest gains from the new policy 

will take decades to have an economic impact. 

Contemporary China has a host of top-flight demographers and population economists—and so far as I can tell, almost all are critics of their country’s population 

program. Some are concerned with human-rights violations; most pragmatically regard the one-child policy as painfully, obviously counterproductive. A number of 

these experts wrote a letter to the State Council a decade ago urging ‘‘reconsideration’’ (translation: complete scrapping) of the one-child norm—to no effect. 

Why has Beijing stubbornly ignored the advice of its own top talent? My baffled 

Chinese colleagues speculate on possible explanations: the difficulty of re-tasking 

the vast army of population-control bureaucrats; the value of the hefty fines exacted 

for out-of-quota births; the neo-Malthusian ideology to which China’s bosses still 

seem to be slave. 

All of these are plausible, but they overlook a key piece: the Chinese government’s 

undying claim to totalitarian control over the most basic details of its subjects’ lives, 

revealed as well by the retrograde hukou system of residence permits that makes 

urban China’s migrant workers illegal aliens in their own country. For all the talk 

of ‘‘reforming’’—and we have been hearing it overseas for almost two decades now— 

the Chinese government has been unwilling to dispense with these instruments of 

social control precisely because they are instruments of social control. 

The ‘‘fatal conceit’’ (to borrow Friedrich Hayek’s term) of China’s population planners was that they could micro-calibrate the behavior of the men and women under 

their command. The new two-child policy suffers the same flaw. As long as Beijing 

deforms Chinese society with these misbegotten tools, the nation’s future will be 

compromised, poorer and sadder than it otherwise could be. 

Mr. Eberstadt is a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. 

‘‘CHINA’S NEW ‘TWO-CHILD POLICY’ AND THE CONTINUATION OF MASSIVE CRIMES

AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN’’ 

DECEMBER 3, 2015

Witnesses 

Nicholas Eberstadt, Ph.D., Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, 

American Enterprise Institute 

Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the 

American Enterprise Institute. A political economist and demographer by training, 

he is a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research, and has served 

on the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic Forum and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as a consultant to the World Bank, Department of State, 

U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Bureau of the Census. With numerous publications on demographics in East Asia, Dr. Eberstadt received his 

Ph.D., M.P.A., and A.B. from Harvard University, and his M.Sc. from the London 

School of Economics. 

Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers 

Ms. Reggie Littlejohn is Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without 

Frontiers, a broad-based international coalition that opposes forced abortion and 

sexual slavery in China. Ms. Littlejohn is an acclaimed expert on China’s One-Child 

Policy, having testified six times before the U.S. Congress, three times before the 

European Parliament, and presented at the British, Irish, and Canadian Parliaments. She has briefed officials at the White House, Department of State, United 

Nations, and the Vatican. Her ‘‘Save a Girl’’ campaign has saved more than 150 

baby girls from sex-selective abortion or grinding poverty in China. A graduate of 

Yale Law School, Ms. Littlejohn was named one of the ‘‘Top Ten’’ people of 2013 

by Inside the Vatican magazine. She and her husband are raising as their own the 

two daughters of jailed pro-democracy dissident Zhang Lin. 

Jennifer Li, Co-Founder, China Life Alliance 

Ms. Jennifer Li lived in China for many years and is a co-founder of China Life 

Alliance, a network of individuals, churches, and ministries who seek to protect the 

lives of millions in China who are threatened by abortion, infanticide, abandonment, 

and trafficking. They do this by educating and mobilizing groups to rescue women 

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and save children through their safe house network, legal aid network, coerced-abortion rescue teams and a variety of other ways. As an American expatriate, wife, and 

mother who has raised her children in China, speaks Chinese, and has Chinese 

friends, Jennifer offers a unique perspective of the pressures that Chinese women 

face. Since 2001, Jennifer has been actively advocating for women and children and 

is a highly sought after speaker on the topic of women’s rights and China’s One 

Child Policy. 

Sarah Huang, Activist 

Ms. Sarah Huang has personally rescued more than 80 Chinese women and children threatened by abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and trafficking. Since 2013, 

international media has covered the efforts of Sarah, a humble pastor in China who 

has been nicknamed the ‘‘Mother Teresa of China,’’ as she courageously assists vulnerable women who must hide their pregnancies to escape coercive abortions from 

Chinese family planning officials. Sarah has been working closely behind the scenes 

with China Life Alliance and has been pivotal in assisting numerous Chinese families, including a number of widely reported forced abortion cases that have been 

leaked into the international media. Sarah is currently pregnant with her second 

child and is now experiencing her own battle to save the life of her unborn child 

from a mandatory abortion. 

Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute 

Mr. Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute 

(1995 to present) and has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population 

control programs. He is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues and an acclaimed author of a number of books, including ‘‘Population 

Control: Real Costs and Illusory Consequences’’ and the best-selling ‘‘A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy.’’ He served as the Director of the Asian Studies Center at the Claremont Institute from 1986–95 and was 

appointed in 1991 to serve as Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Broadcasting to the PRC. He was educated at the University of Washington and Stanford 

University and, following a period of naval service (1968–76), in 1979 became the 

first American social scientist permitted to do field research in China since the Communist revolution. 

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