Babies are a strange topic for a weighty book about China. But Mei Fong’s moving and highly personal account of the one-child policy will teach you more about the dysfunction and cruelty of modern-day China than any other. The story of her train ride to Sichuan Province with parents whose only children were killed in the 2008 is as heartbreaking as anything I’ve every read about China.
–Barbara Demick, LA Times, author of Nothing to Envy
Mei Fong reveals the dark underbelly of China’s one-child policy. Whatever the original intentions, its implementation has led to heartache, human rights abuses and forced coercion of women across the country. Even more poignant is the fact that the State’s attempt to control reproductive rights may prove to be an Achilles heel derailing its economic rise.
–Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking
In human history, China’s one-child policy is unique. If you want to understand how it affected the lives of ordinary people and Chinese society as a whole, you need to read this. With its vivid character portrayals and incredible stories, One Child is an eye-opening book.
–Xinran Xue, author of The Good Women of China and Buy Me the Sky: The Remarkable Truth of China’s One-Child Generations
A highly impressive account of one of the controversial aspects of today’s China combining policy analysis, extensive on-the-ground reporting and personal experience.
–Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of Modern China and Tiger Head, Snake Tails
One Child is a riveting read, written with the flair and compassion of a novel. But it is also a critically important book about the future of China, necessary reading both for policy experts and anyone interested in the future of one of the most important nations of the 21st century.
–Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business, former Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs
‘Eye-opening, powerful and utterly gripping, One Child had me hooked from page one. Mei Fong possesses a rare eye for the details that truly illuminate a story, the ones that most of us overlook. She writes beautifully and vividly, revealing sides of China I’d never imagined to exist.’
–Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Triple Package
“One Child” is a timely and informative look into China’s infamous effort to control its enormous population. But Mei Fong has also given us a wry, bittersweet, and often very personal look at how courtship, marriage, birth, and death interact in the post-Mao Chinese family. A lovely antidote to decades of chillingly cold Party-speak from Beijing.
—Orville Schell, author of Wealth and Power
Mei Fong’s brilliant exploration of China’s one-child policy must change the way we talk about China’s rise. “One Child” is lucid, humane, and unflinching; it is vital reading for anyone focused on the future of China’s economy, its environment, or its politics. It not only clarifies facts, and retires myths, but also confronts the deepest questions about the meaning of parenthood.
–Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, author of Age of Ambition
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