One Child Nation

Last updated
One Child Nation
OneChildPoster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Produced by
  • Nanfu Wang
  • Jialing Zhang
  • Christoph Jorg
  • Julie Goldman
  • Christopher Clements
  • Carolyn Hepburn
Cinematography
  • Nanfu Wang
  • Yuanchen Liu
Edited byNanfu Wang
Music by
  • Nathan Halpern
  • Chris Ruggiero
Production
companies
  • Next Generation
  • ITVS
  • WDR/Arte
  • Motto Pictures
  • Pumpernickel Films
Distributed by Amazon Studios
Release dates
  • January 26, 2019 (2019-01-26)(Sundance)
  • August 9, 2019 (2019-08-09)(United States)
Running time
89 minutes
CountryUnited States
Languages
Box office$271,841 [1]

One Child Nation is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang about the fallout of China's one-child policy that lasted from 1979 to 2015. The documentary is made up of various interviews with former village chiefs, state officials, ex-human traffickers, artists, midwives, journalists, researchers, and victims of the one-child policy. Nanfu Wang stated, in a roundtable discussion, that when creating the film she wanted to do a "360 degree with the policy—people who carried out the policy and people who were the victims of the policy". [2] During the film, Nanfu Wang discovers more about the ties her own family have with the one-child policy, as they unsuccessfully attempt to locate her cousin who was abandoned by her father’s sister in 1989. By the end of the film, Nanfu Wang admits that despite the horrors of the one-child policy, there is an overwhelming acceptance of the policy that remains in China, and a shared attitude that there was no other choice. The closing scenes of the film show the growing propaganda for two child families, presenting the repetition of state interference with family planning within China. [3]

Contents

One Child Nation premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2019, where it was awarded the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary Award, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 9, 2019, by Amazon Studios.

Historical context

This documentary focuses on the impact of the one-child policy which dominated family planning in Post-Mao China from 1979 to 2015. The state prioritised the scientific motivations behind the one-child policy, hoping to brake the increasing population. By 1980, officials claimed that the one-child policy had averted over 300 million births. [4] In the first stages of the policy, women were encouraged to delay getting pregnant, and state slogans were devised to encourage this, such as ‘later, longer, fewer’. The policy was far more readily accepted in urban areas in contrast to rural areas. Rural areas resented the policy vehemently, resulting in village cadres being attacked frequently for attempting to implement the policy. [3] Village Officials would administer fines, destroy property, confiscate possessions, and abduct women for forced abortion and sterilizations. Therefore, as fear rose so did female infanticide and the gender ratio became imbalanced. [5] Though, it was not just female babies who were killed, to have a male child was commonly far more sought after within Chinese culture. Due to this, there became a disproportionately large number of men in comparison to women as time went on – this, in turn, resulted in a further rise in ‘bare sticks’.  Many have condemned the state’s lack of concern over the social repercussions of the one-child policy. ‘One Child Nation’ focuses acutely on the impact of the one-child policy on an individual level.

Documentary topics

One-child policy

The One-Child Policy is the main theme of ‘One Child Nation’ as Nanfu Wang explores its impact. Within the conducted interview with Zaodi Wang (Nanfu Wang’s mother), she reveals the struggles that she faced as a result of going against the one-child policy, and birthing two children: Nanfu Wang and Zhihao Wang. The audience is informed that Zaodi Wang’s father, Zhimei Wang, opposed the movement to sterilise Zaodi Wang after Nanfu Wang’s birth. They avoided this forced sterilisation by agreeing to wait five years before having another child. Not fully discussed within this documentary was the inclusion of this condition which allowed women to become pregnant again with a second child and would often cost the family a fine of approximately 4,000 yuan ($500 USD), and was more common in rural areas. [6] Zaodi reveals that if she had birthed another girl, she would have felt that she had no choice but to abandon her. Nanfu Wang also admits that she felt embarrassed growing up because she had a sibling, and was not an only child like the rest of her peers at school. The documentary goes on to discuss the prominent role of state propaganda, such as opera, in spreading the one-child policy. In many areas slogans, such as “Better blood flowing like streams than children born outside the state plan” were painted onto village walls, in order to fear-monger and spread the one-child policy further. [7]

Child infanticide

The term ‘Child Infanticide’, usually and somewhat misleadingly referred to as ‘Female infanticide’, describes the act of killing a newborn. When used in association with China, this term also branches out to the act of abandoning a newborn for dead. Specific examples are explored within Nanfu Wang’s own family as her mother’s brother abandoned his child in the market, in the hope of somebody rescuing her, however nobody did and she died after having spent three days on the streets. In addition, Nanfu interviews artist Peng Wang whose artwork, focusing on the idea of ‘trash’, presents the horrors of the one-child policy as he incorporates graphic images of dead, abandoned babies in medical waste bags in the middle of rubbish heaps. In 2014, Peng Wang was evicted from his home in Songzhuang, by the Beijing state security police as a result of his outspoken opinions and controversial art. [8] His studio was also destroyed by state officials in 2021 as a result of his warnings to the world about China’s handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic. [9] The documentary’s interrogation of child infanticide aims to demonstrate the extent of state control within China. In the New Yorker’s Roundtable Discussion series, Nanfu Wang states “Ironically the people that we want to see the film most are the people who can’t see. It’s Chinese people. [10] ” Thus highlighting the continuing problem of state control within China.

Forced abortion and sterilization

The act of both forced abortion and sterilization was present throughout the existence of the one-child policy in China. It should be clarified that the Chinese national government never officially legitimised coerced abortion. [11] However, throughout ‘One Child Nation’, those who implemented these policies disagree. Nanfu Wang’s interview with Tunde Wang describes the duties of the rural village officials in implementing the one-child policy. Tunde Wang talks of how women who refused to be sterilised would be collectively forced to by a group of village officials; he admits “I couldn’t bear to watch. Honestly, I couldn’t take part in that. [12] ” In addition, Nanfu Wang speaks with Huaru Yuan, a rural midwife, to establish the role of village doctors and midwives in assisting the state policy. Huaru Yuan states “I’ve done a total of between 50,000 and 60,000 sterilizations and abortions. Many I have induced alive and killed. But I had no choice, it was the government’s policy. [12] ” This section unveils the way that village doctors and midwives would travel around the county performing sterilizations and abortions. Some of these procedures would be carried out on unwilling, abducted women who had been brought to the medical station by government officials. The extent of trauma was somewhat dictated by the government official; some women describe being dragged from their beds in the middle of the night and being taken to be sterilised. The state guaranteed that overzealous government officials would be retrained and disciplined, however this rarely happened. [13]

Human trafficking

The documentary explores the role of human trafficking within China during the domination of the one-child policy. In this instance, the role of Human Trafficking mostly outlines the act of collecting already abandoned babies. Nanfu Wang interviews ex-human trafficker Yueneng Duan to investigate his methods. Yueneng Duan, and his family, worked in the Guangdong and Hunan provinces in the 1990s, finding children to sell to orphanages. Yueneng Duan reveals “I used to walk on this road day and night to see if there were any abandoned babies. If so, I would bring them to the orphanages. The orphanages would pay me $200 for each baby I brought in. They then put them up for international adoption. [12] " Yueneng Duan was prosecuted and sentenced to 6 years in prison. Within this section, the documentary introduces Brian and Longlan Stuy and their mission to reunite Chinese families with their lost children who were adopted internationally by US citizens. Brian Stuy also publishes his research, Open Secret: Cash and Coercion in China’s International Adoption Program. He reveals that children were being supplied for adoption through three main ways: ‘baby buying’ schemes within Chinese orphanages, ‘education’ programs which facilitated the falsification of date of birth records, and ‘confiscation’ of children led by population control officials. [14]

List of appearances

[12]

Production

Both directors Wang and Zhang were born under the one-child policy in China during the 1980s, but knew little of its effects as it was second nature among the country's populace. After moving to the United States and getting pregnant with her first child in 2017, Wang returned to China in an effort to "explore the direct effects of the 'population war' on her family... acquaintances from her rural village, midwives, family planning officials, journalists and artists. [15] "

Reception

Box office

The film opened at one theater in New York City and one in Los Angeles and grossed $22,244 in its opening weekend, with Amazon reporting "sold-out shows throughout the weekend. [16] "

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 98% of 100 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10.The website's consensus reads: "As illuminating as it is accessible, One Child Nation probes a painful chapter in Chinese history with piercing clarity." [17] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [18]

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a valuable record and a sober but frightening illustration of the dark side of this government-controlled experiment" and praised the editing and musical score. [15] Ram Venkat Srikar of Cinema Sentries called the film "an unapologetic description of the unpleasant aftermath of China's One-Child Policy". [19] Inkoo Kang at Slate wrote that the film is "best viewed as an oral history of a desperate experiment in a fast-changing, selectively amnesiac country" but that "its directness and intimacy lend an indelibility that encyclopedic framing could never approximate." [20] An independent reviewer noted that the film primarily explores the policy’s impact on a few interconnected families in rural China rather than presenting a comprehensive view of the nation. [21]

ChinaFile published a set of critiques of "the film’s many lacunae, distortions (including overgeneralizations), and failures to address the policy in broader perspective, especially its clear and substantial benefits to significant numbers of women". [22]

Foreign language adaptions

The documentary film was aired in German by TV-channel arte on 22. October 2019 as "Land der Einzelkinder". [23]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">One-child policy</span> Former population control policy in China

The one-child policy was a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. The program had wide-ranging social, cultural, economic, and demographic effects, although the contribution of one-child restrictions to the broader program has been the subject of controversy. Its efficacy in reducing birth rates and defensibility from a human rights perspective have been subjects of controversy.

Sterilization is any of a number of medical methods of permanent birth control that intentionally leaves a person unable to reproduce. Sterilization methods include both surgical and non-surgical options for both males and females. Sterilization procedures are intended to be permanent; reversal is generally difficult.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human population planning</span> Practice of controlling rate of growth

Human population planning is the practice of managing the growth rate of a human population. The practice, traditionally referred to as population control, had historically been implemented mainly with the goal of increasing population growth, though from the 1950s to the 1980s, concerns about overpopulation and its effects on poverty, the environment and political stability led to efforts to reduce population growth rates in many countries. More recently, however, several countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Iran, Italy, Spain, Finland, Hungary and Estonia have begun efforts to boost birth rates once again, generally as a response to looming demographic crises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Family planning</span> Planning when to have children

Family planning is the consideration of the number of children a person wishes to have, including the choice to have no children, and the age at which they wish to have them. Things that may play a role on family planning decisions include marital situation, career or work considerations, financial situations. If sexually active, family planning may involve the use of contraception and other techniques to control the timing of reproduction.

Female infanticide is the deliberate killing of newborn female children. Female infanticide is prevalent in several nations around the world. It has been argued that the low status in which women are viewed in patriarchal societies creates a bias against females. The modern practice of gender-selective abortion is also used to regulate gender ratios.

Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:

Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compulsory sterilization</span> Sterilization effected by government coercion

Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, refers to any government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done by surgical or chemical means.

Abortion in Russia is legal as an elective procedure up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and in special circumstances at later stages. In 2009, Russia reported 1.2 million abortions, out of a population of 143 million people. In 2020, Russia had decreased its number of abortions to 450 thousand.

Abortion in China is legal at all stages of pregnancy and generally accessible nationwide. Abortions are available to most women through China's family planning program, public hospitals, private hospitals, and clinics nationwide. China was one of the first developing countries to permit abortion when the pregnant woman's health was at risk and make it easily accessible under these circumstances in the 1950s. Following the Chinese Communist Revolution and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the country has periodically switched between more restrictive abortion policies to more liberal abortion policies and reversals. Abortion regulations may vary depending on the rules of the province. In an effort to curb sex-selective abortion, Jiangxi and Guizhou restrict non-medically necessary abortions after 14 weeks of pregnancy, while throughout most of China elective abortions are legal after 14 weeks. Although sex-selective abortions are illegal nationwide, they were previously commonplace, leading to a sex-ratio imbalance in China which still exists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Family planning in India</span>

Family planning in India is based on efforts largely sponsored by the Indian government. From 1965 to 2009, contraceptive usage has more than tripled and the fertility rate has more than halved, but the national fertility rate in absolute numbers remains high, causing concern for long-term population growth. India adds up to 1,000,000 people to its population every 20 days. Extensive family planning has become a priority in an effort to curb the projected population of two billion by the end of the twenty-first century.

The Iron Fist Campaign was a compulsory sterilization program conducted in the summer of 2010 by family planning officials in Puning, a county in Guangdong, China.

Forced abortion is a form of reproductive coercion that refers to the act of compelling a woman to undergo termination of a pregnancy against her will or without explicit consent. Forced abortion may also be defined as coerced abortion, and may occur due to a variety of outside forces such as societal pressure, or due to intervention by perpetrators such as an intimate partner, parental guardian, medical practitioners, or others who may cause abortion by force, threat or coercion. It may also occur by taking advantage of a situation where a pregnant individual is unable to give consent, or when valid consent is in question due to duress. This may also include the instances when the conduct was neither justified by medical or hospital treatment, which does not include instances in which the pregnant individual is at risk of life-threatening injury due to unsustainable pregnancy. Similar to other forms of reproductive coercion such as forced sterilization, forced abortion may include a physical invasion of female reproductive organs, therefore creating the possibly of causing long term threat or injury preventing viable future pregnancies. Forced abortion is considered a human rights violation by the United Nations due to its failure to comply with the human right to reproductive choice and control without coercion, discrimination, and violence.

Female foeticide in India is the abortion of a female foetus outside of legal methods. A research by Pew Research Center based on Union government data indicates foeticide of at least 9 million females in the years 2000–2019. The research found that 86.7% of these foeticides were by Hindus, followed by Sikhs with 4.9%, and Muslims with 6.6%. The research also indicated an overall decline in preference for sons in the time period.

It's a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World is a 2012 documentary film which explores the practice of female infanticide. It was directed by Evan Grae Davis and focused primarily on India and China. The United Nations has estimated that up to 200 million females are "missing" today, most of whom would have lived in India and China. The film took four years to shoot.

China has a history of female infanticide which spans 2,000 years. When Christian missionaries arrived in China in the late sixteenth century, they witnessed newborns being thrown into rivers or onto rubbish piles. In the seventeenth century Matteo Ricci documented that the practice occurred in several of China's provinces and said that the primary reason for the practice was poverty. The practice continued into the 19th century and declined precipitously during the Communist era, but has reemerged as an issue since the introduction of the one-child policy in the early 1980s. The 2020 census showed a male-to-female ratio of 105.07 to 100 for mainland China, a record low since the People's Republic of China began conducting censuses. Every year in China and India alone, there are close to two million instances of some form of female infanticide.

Female infanticide in India has a history spanning centuries. Poverty, the dowry system, births to unmarried women, deformed infants, famine, lack of support services, and maternal illnesses such as postpartum depression are among the causes that have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of female infanticide in India.

For years, the census data in China has recorded a significant imbalance in the sex ratio toward the male population, meaning there are fewer women than men. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the missing women or missing girls of China. China's official census report from 2000 shows that there were 117 boys for every 100 girls. The sex imbalance in some rural areas is even higher, at 130 boys to 100 girls, compared to a global average of 105 or 106 boys to 100 girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nanfu Wang</span> Chinese-born American filmmaker (b. 1985)

Nanfu Wang is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. Her debut film Hooligan Sparrow premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017. Her second film, I Am Another You, premiered at SXSW Film Festival in 2017 and won two special jury awards, and her third film, One Child Nation, won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Wang is the recipient of a 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking, from the Vilcek Foundation.

Son preference in China is a gender preference issue underpinned by the belief that boys have more value than girls. In China, the bias towards male over female offspring is demonstrated by the sex ratio at birth (SRB).

Childbirth in China is influenced by traditional Chinese medicine, state control of reproductive health and birthing, and the adoption of modern biomedical practices. There are an estimated 16 million births annually in mainland China. As of 2022, Chinese state media reported the country's total fertility rate to be 1.09. In 2023, there were 7.88 million births.

References

  1. ↑ "One Child Nation". Box Office Mojo . Archived from the original on July 23, 2019. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
  2. ↑ Greenhalgh, Susan (June 2003). "Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy". Population and Development Review. 29 (2): 163–196. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2003.00163.x.
  3. 1 2 Judd, Ellen R. (2019-11-04). "Women and China's Revolutions Gail Hershatter Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018 xx + 397 pp. £24.95; $36.00 ISBN 978-1-4422-1569-6". The China Quarterly. 240: 1167–1168. doi:10.1017/s0305741019001279. ISSN   0305-7410. S2CID   211304717.
  4. ↑ Greenhalgh, Susan (June 2003). "Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy". Population and Development Review. 29 (2): 163–196. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2003.00163.x. ISSN   0098-7921.
  5. ↑ Ebenstein, Avraham (2010). "The "Missing Girls" of China and the Unintended Consequences of the One Child Policy". Journal of Human Resources. 45 (1): 87–115. doi:10.1353/jhr.2010.0003. ISSN   1548-8004. S2CID   201752851.
  6. ↑ Feng, Wang; Gu, Baochang; Cai, Yong (March 2016). "The End of China's One-Child Policy". Studies in Family Planning. 47 (1): 83–86. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4465.2016.00052.x. ISSN   0039-3665. PMID   27027994.
  7. ↑ WANG, GUOYAN (2018-03-19). "Wall Slogans: the Communication of China's Family Planning Policy in Rural Areas". Rural History. 29 (1): 99–112. doi:10.1017/s095679331800002x. ISSN   0956-7933. S2CID   165502160.
  8. ↑ Cuzman, Miruna (2020-07-27), "An Artist Metamorphosed: William Orpen's Modernist Paintings of the First World War", War and Art, Brill | Schöningh, pp. 29–49, doi:10.30965/9783657702923_003, ISBN   9783657702923, S2CID   225474540 , retrieved 2022-05-03
  9. ↑ "Beijing Officials Demolish Studio of Activist Artist". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
  10. ↑ Nanfu Wang on Growing Up With China's One Child Policy & State Propaganda | Close Up , retrieved 2022-05-03
  11. ↑ "Jing-Bao Nie (1999), 'The Problem of Coerced Abortion in China and Related Ethical Issues', Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 8, pp. 463–75", Abortion, Routledge, pp. 445–458, 2017-03-02, doi:10.4324/9781315263502-26, ISBN   9781315263502 , retrieved 2022-05-03
  12. 1 2 3 4 Petruska, Karen (2018-01-03), "Amazon Prime Video", From Networks to Netflix, New York: Routledge, pp. 355–364, doi:10.4324/9781315658643-33, ISBN   978-1-315-65864-3 , retrieved 2022-05-03
  13. ↑ OOSTERVELD, V. L. (1996-10-01). "The Canadian Guidelines on Gender-Related Persecution: An Evaluation". International Journal of Refugee Law. 8 (4): 569–596. doi:10.1093/ijrl/8.4.569. ISSN   0953-8186.
  14. ↑ McKenna, Brian G.; Simpson, Alexander I.F.; Coverdale, John H. (July 2003). "Patients' perceptions of coercion on admission to forensic psychiatric hospital: a comparison study". International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. 26 (4): 355–372. doi:10.1016/s0160-2527(03)00046-3. ISSN   0160-2527. PMID   12726810.
  15. 1 2 David Rooney (January 26, 2019). "'One Child Nation': Film Review – Sundance 2019". The Hollywood Reporter . Archived from the original on February 4, 2021. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
  16. ↑ Brooks, Brian (August 11, 2019). "'The Peanut Butter Falcon' Leads Mixed Weekend; Music Doc 'Bring The Soul' Croons; 'The Farewell' Salutes $10M: Specialty Box Office". Deadline Hollywood . Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  17. ↑ "One Child Nation". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved October 10, 2021. OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  18. ↑ "One Child Nation". Metacritic . Fandom, Inc. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
  19. ↑ Ram Venkat Srikar (December 19, 2019). "'One Child Nation': Film Review – MAMI 2019". Archived from the original on January 14, 2020. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  20. ↑ Kang, Inkoo (9 August 2019). "One Child Nation Is a Haunting Documentary About a Country's Attempts to Justify the Unjustifiable". Slate . Archived from the original on 15 November 2021. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  21. ↑ Ryan, Patrick (5 May 2023). "Film Review: One Child Nation". SSRN Working Paper. SSRN   4428151 . Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  22. ↑ Li, Jie; Greenhalgh, Susan; Thornber, Karen (6 February 2020). "What a Picture of China's One-Child Policy Leaves Out". ChinaFile. New York: Asia Society . Retrieved 21 November 2021.
  23. ↑ "Land der Einzelkinder" (in German). Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. 21 October 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2023.

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