n 1978, China decided that they liked what they saw.Having more than one fifth of the world’s population, China had very little power in the world. In 1978, China realized they already had the manpower, so they set out to modernize the country. The efforts to modernize made China take a hard look at their population. They saw that foreign trade of their resources were limited because of the demand they had in their own country. This held back the economy and finally got the attention of the Chinese government.The one child policy began in 1979. It was China’s greatest effort to contain the population and to improve the economy. Economists stated that China needed to limit its population to about 1.2 billion by the year 2000 in order to achieve economic success. The one child campaign and its effectiveness rested on a combination of rewards and penalties. Rewards for the one child families included cash bonuses, preferential housing, job, and school enrollments, and free medical care and schooling for the child in the cities. For peasants, rewards were less appealing because there were no real benefits for framing. Penalties for more than two children included withdraw of health subsidies and paid maternity leaves, reduced rations for foodstuffs, and workpoint reductions. The one child policy often broke down in the country side. Urban families mostly followed the government rule but rural areas saw the laws enforced less frequent. In the countryside if your first child is a girl you can seek permission to try for a second for a son. The government accepts that in the countryside a son is needed to inherit the land and to look for the elderly parents. The cities were different mostly because they were in the transition to become a modern society. Here the government instilled the notion that it was for the good of their country to abide by the one child policy.The one child policy philosophy places the importance on the welfa...
