"China Inside Out" Chapter 9

One of the most intriguing things I found about Chapter 9 in Bill Dodson's “China Inside Out” has to do with the rich reaction to the one child policy China has implemented. Dodson describes a Chinese businessman who had violated the one child policy by having three children. He simply barged into the birth control office “and flung more than US$30,000 on the desk of an official, and told [him] to take however much... the government required to leave... his family alone” (Dodson 182). In past chapters of this book, as well as on the news and in documentaries, I have seen terrible situations with the poor in China, but the fact that the rich are rich enough to make their problems disappear by throwing money at them is sickening. It tells me that the economy is way out of balance, and in regards to the one child policy, by letting people pay their way out of the problem, China is showing that they would rather have more rich children than poor children whose parents cannot afford to have more than one child. There is a similar issue in the United States; The rich tend to throw money at their problems too, except it tends to be poorer families with more children, strangely enough. In application to our own population issues, I do not think the U.S. is crowded enough to need such a policy, but if it was ever implemented, the same would likely happen. More rich children would be born than poor. Another shock to me was the purchasing of brides from other countries. Vietnamese and North Korean women are being sold to Chinese men for between US$406-1,358 (Dodson 193). While it is illegal, the fact that it still happens means that it is not a terribly enforced law. The reason this want for foreign brides has come up is because there is a surplus of Chinese men. Thanks to the one child policy and preference for males to carry on the family lineage, more boys are kept in Chinese families than girls, so there is a lack of women for these men. I see this as sickening because it is a violation of human rights, and putting a price tag on anyone is wrong. In the United States, I have not heard of a similar issue, since male to female ratios are almost equal. I do not see the need for a one child policy in the U.S. yet, but I think more couples should be encouraged to adopt, since there are plenty of children in want of parents, so why should we be making so many more?