ad info




TIME Asia
TIME Asia Home
Current Issue
Magazine Archive
Asia Buzz
Travel Watch
Web Features
  Entertainment
  Photo Essays

Subscribe to TIME
Customer Services
About Us
Write to TIME Asia

TIME.com
TIME Canada
TIME Europe
TIME Pacific
TIME Digital
Asiaweek
Latest CNN News

Young China
Olympics 2000
On The Road

 ASIAWEEK.COM
 CNN.COM
  east asia
  southeast asia
  south asia
  central asia
  australasia
 BUSINESS
 SPORTS
 SHOWBIZ
 ASIA WEATHER
 ASIA TRAVEL


Other News
From TIME Asia

Culture on Demand: Black is Beautiful
The American Express black card is the ultimate status symbol

Asia Buzz: Should the Net Be Free?
Web heads want it all -- for nothing

JAPAN: Failed Revolution
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori clings to power as dissidents in his party finally decide not to back a no-confidence motion

Cover: Endgame?
After Florida's controversial ballot recount, Bush holds a 537-vote lead in the state, which could give him the election

TIME Digest
FORTUNE.com
FORTUNE China
MONEY.com

TIME Asia Services
Subscribe
Subscribe to TIME! Get up to 3 MONTHS FREE!

Bookmark TIME
TIME Media Kit
Recent awards

Visions of China CNN TIME Asiaweek Fortune

SEPTEMBER 27, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 12

CHILDREN'S PALACE: China Copes With the One-Child Policy, 1980

Fritz Hoffmann/Network Photographers for TIME
Elite kids perform and practice at Shanghai's China Children's Welfare Institute, a former private mansion.
A Generation of Little Emperors
By LORI REESE

If you restrict families to just one child--as China has, more or less, since 1980--you're going to get a whole lot of spoiled kids. The problem in China is so acute that it's changing how society functions.

To see these Little Emperors in action, step inside the Shanghai branch of the China Children's Welfare Institute, better known as the Children's Palace. On any given afternoon, parents are out in force, fawning over their immaculately dressed sons and daughters as they prepare for extracurricular classes in English, computer studies and performing arts. Though many of these precocious kids can recite the English alphabet or read newspapers in traditional Chinese characters by the time they're 10, their parents often still perform basic tasks for them: fixing their hair, tying their shoes, wiping their bottoms.

The Palace, once the private home of real estate tycoon Sir Elly Kadoorie, is a remnant of Shanghai's excessive past. Built in 1924, its resplendent marble halls and expansive lawns were put to more proletarian use after the communists reopened it in 1953 as a children's recreation center. These days it caters to the overachieving offspring of Shanghai's pushiest parents. Just ask Tao Ling, a dance teacher at the Palace. At the start of class, she struggles to shoo away the doting mothers still placing the finishing touches on their daughters' braids and bows. "It's impossible to do anything if they're watching," says Tao, shutting the door firmly.

    ALSO IN TIME
VISIONS OF CHINA
China's Amazing Half Century
Navigate through the People's Republic of China and discover the 50 places where history was made

China's Wild Ride
The early years of Mao's new republic were exhilarating and disastrous. Deng Xiaoping brought the country back from the brink

Essay: Happy Birthday to Me!
A Beijing writer recalls what he was doing when the People's Republic celebrated some earlier birthdays

  VISIONS OF CHINA
50 years of the People's Republic
presented by CNN, TIME, Asiaweek and Fortune

Asiaweek
Quest for Dignity
The success of the Communist revolution climaxed a century-long drive by the Chinese to reclaim their historical greatness

Mao liked children, or at least he encouraged China's citizens to have as many as possible. When a 1982 census revealed that the Chairman's baby boom had pushed the population beyond 1 billion, China put teeth into the family-planning policy it had introduced two years earlier. Some 80,000 cadres were dispersed around the country in an aggressive campaign aimed at reducing the total population to 700 million by 2050. To enforce the policy, China introduced severe economic penalties for above-quota births. Strong-arm coercion was common. Horror stories emerged about forced late-term abortions and infanticide--girls were often abandoned by parents who wished instead for a boy. China still defends the policy, though not, of course, the excesses. Annual population growth, Beijing claims, is less than half the level of the 1970s. A recent Xinhua report said the policy has "saved China and the world the burden of coping with an extra 300 million people."

But while attitudes have changed in the cities, they have scarcely shifted in the countryside, where the majority of China's people still reside. "Its sort of an unofficial, official policy that farmers are allowed more children," says Peng Zhou, China's national program officer for the United Nations Population Fund. Peasants intent upon producing a healthy male heir are officially allowed to try again if the first child is, as Peng puts it, either "deformed in some way, or a girl."

Now there are signs the policy may be softening, even in urban areas. Laws requiring parents to register for permits before having a child have been eliminated in many places, and regulations have been drawn up to prohibit family planning workers in the countryside from forcing women to undergo abortions and sterilization.

The world that China's kids inhabit is a far cry from that of their parents. The earlier hardships are scarcely fathomable to today's TV-watching, french-fry chomping young. Having been denied education and material goods as children, many adults wildly overcompensate in doting on their kids. "Parents have a hard time saying no," says Xia Ming, who teaches environmental studies at the Children's Palace. "They had nothing, so the kids are their only hope." The youngsters tend to act as if special treatment is their due. "They're impossible to discipline," complains Tao, the dance instructor. "Their mothers and fathers don't care."

As class winds up, the young dancers comment on whether they would want a sibling, "I want a little sister!" several girls chirp in unison. Shu Mingzhu, a 10-year-old wearing a red leotard with matching bows, elaborates: "One with big eyes, who I could play with."

ALSO SEE:
SHANGHAI: City of Illusions
SHANGHAI NORTH STATION: Exodus to Hong Kong


This edition's table of contents
TIME Asia home

CNN's Visions of China home

AsiaNow


 Search


Back to the top   © 1999 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.