In 1980, faced with a burgeoning population and its resultant economic pressures, China enacted a family-planning policy that would, with few exceptions, limit families to one child. Janet Song’s clear, smoothly paced narration is well suited to this fascinating and informative account of the effects of the one-child edict (which in 2015 was changed to a two-child policy). She guides …
Continue Reading...Listen to Mei’s interview here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/radio-hour-rainn-wilson-mei-fong-game-thrones This week’s show features more interviews from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. We talk with actor Rainn Wilson, author of a new memoir, The Bassoon King, and with Malaysian Chinese writer Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment. We also talk with LARB Senior Humanities Editor …
Continue Reading...It’s hard to put into words what runs through the mind when reading Mei Fong’s One Child – a gripping work that delves into China’s infamous policy. Though the policy was amended last year to allow couples to have two children, the legacy of the one child policy, introduced in 1979, runs deep and has had a huge impact on …
Continue Reading...China should be an object lesson on the dangers of state intervention into the womb. By MEI FONG Special to The Times WITH immigration and reproductive rights as hot-button issues in upcoming U.S. elections, it’s worth considering how China’s one-child policy — recently expanded to a two-child limit — has affected its largest trading partner. In a nutshell, the one-child …
Continue Reading...When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birth-rates would help lift China’s poorest and increase the country’s global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young …
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