Population Control in China: State-Sponsored Violence Against Women and Children

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China presents a hearing on China's population control program and the horrible violence the program incurs toward Chinese women and children.

China’s infamous “One-Child Policy” marks its 35th anniversary this year.  It has been called the world’s largest social experiment and has had tragic effects on Chinese families and society.  Coercive population control policies are also the cause of a demographic time bomb. China has a rapidly aging population, a shrinking labor force, and a dramatic gender imbalance that drives regional human trafficking problems and potentially higher levels of crime and societal instability.  China’s central government has started to gently revise its population control policies in the past year, though the overall policy and the huge bureaucracy that enforces it remain intact.  When will China finally dismantle its coercive family planning practices?  How will history judge the “One-Child Policy?”  The hearing will examine the looming demographic, economic, and social problems associated with China’s “One-Child Policy” and seek recommendations on how the international community can assist China to address them. 

Witnesses:

Nicholas Eberstadt, Ph.D., Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute

Valerie M. Hudson, Ph.D., Professor and George H.W. Bush Chair in the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University; Co-author, Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population

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

Chai Ling, Founder, All Girls Allowed; Author, A Heart for Freedom and a leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square student movement

Chen Guangcheng, Chinese legal advocate; Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies; Author, The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China

This hearing will be webcast live here.

Click here to download a copy of the Commission's full 2014 Annual Report.