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Ed. Magazine

China's One-Child Policy Comes of Age

The Research of Assistant Professor Vanessa Fong The Chinese government initiated an aggressive and experimental policy in 1979, requiring that urban families limit themselves to one child each. This was a huge change: Chinese women averaged six births a piece in 1970, and parents traditionally relied on a large number of offspring to provide an economic security blanket. The purpose of the initiative, says HGSE assistant professor Vanessa Fong, was to help the country leapfrog from a Third-World economy into the First-World economy by mimicking First-World fertility and education patterns. [caption id="attachment_8574" align="alignleft" width="185" caption="Assistant Professor Vanessa Fong (© 2004 Andrew Brilliant / Brilliant Pictures, Inc.)"]
[/caption] Now, 25 years later, China has its first generation of what Fong calls "singletons," or only-children. These teens and young adults have had both education and the attentions of their parents lavished upon them, and, in urban areas, they have nearly universally been primed for good, white-collar jobs. The challenge, however, is that the economic opportunities in the country have not kept pace. As a result, the weight of expectation—both the expectations of the 20-somethings and the expectations of their parents—is, Fong says, nearly crushing. "In a way, the country wanted to have their cake and eat it, too," Fong says. They wanted children with traditional assumptions about their responsibilities to the family, humility, and self-sacrifice, in addition to modernized ambitions—an unrelenting drive to become the elite. As this generation enters the work force, few are getting what they were promised, Fong explains. "Once they imagined themselves as part of the First World, thinking 'I'm going to go to the best university, sacrifice all my leisure time and friendships, and become really wealthy,' there is no way they are also going to think 'but, if I don't get it, oh well, I'll just be happy and won't complain.'"
"In a way, the country wanted to have their cake and eat it, too," Fong says.
An anthropologist born in Taiwan and raised in California, Fong began her research in 1997, working with 107 families in the coastal city of Dalian as a tutor. In 1999, she surveyed 2,273 Dalian teens. The results of her study will be published in a forthcoming book, Only Hope: Coming of Age Under China's One-Child Policy. Fong found a generation that has had countless family dollars poured into its education. Students in Dalian, for instance, pay as much as $4,375 for private school. This in a city, Fong says, where most families are on tight budgets. Poor families, she estimates, have annual incomes of about $900, and families identifying themselves as wealthy make just $3,750. Many parents sacrifice their diets for their children’s education, trimming down to two meals a day in order to provide their children with snacks during the school day. Add to that books, computers, semi-mandatory night classes, and tutors. Jockeying for the best private tutor, Fong says, is perceived as immensely important to a student’s academic success; tutors and teachers who develop strong track records in helping children pass important entrance exams earn a lifetime network of connections that are unheard of in the U.S. School is mandatory only through junior high, and, in previous generations, only the most talented son—or, in rare cases, daughter—was sent to high school and college. Today, however, nearly all urban singletons stay in school. The result is nationwide diploma inflation; jobs that a young adult secured only ten years ago with a vocational degree, such as a bank teller, now require four years of college. This is confusing to young adults, says Fong, and it's not any easier on their parents. In just 30 years, people aged 65 or older are projected to make up 22 percent of China’s population. These older adults will have been counting on the fortune from their children's hard-earned schooling to provide for their retirement. With only one child and no national social security plan, this responsibility will likely fall on the shoulders of a generation unable to fulfill it. In addition to borrowing the First World’s most profitable fertility and education patterns, China may find itself inheriting the First World’s inequalities, frustrated aspirations, and social welfare struggles. About the Article A version of this article originally appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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