Just to make it clear, these types of enforcement are not norms. The law never suggested such enforcement. The law is that you get a financial fine if you have more than one child, that's it. It's actually against the law to force any kind of abortion. That being said, in some rural area, some officials maybe so greedy to make achievement for their "career" that they "enforce" this policy by breaking the law.

Some of the examples you listed have only one report. And it's policy that lasted almost 40 years in a country with a billion people.

> Just to make it clear, these types of enforcement are not norms

Back up your statement with a citation please. Considering that they explicitly made forced abortions of these kinds illegal (although this is hardly enforced) implies that it was a big enough problem the government needed to step in.

> Considering that they explicitly made forced abortions of these kinds illegal (although this is hardly enforced) implies that it was a big enough problem the government needed to step in.

The officials are not dumb, they probably saw the incentives structure and decided to ban this proactively.

GP has a good point. Singular events in few decades in a population of over a billion? That's either bullshit or random fluke, depending on how charitable you want to be towards the report, but it's definitely not something a reasonable person should care about.

His source is the same as yours, if you read your own source.

> in some rural area

I spent a summer in Beijing in 1998 and knew a young lady whose unborn baby was forcibly killed. So I don't buy "in some rural area".

This was a lot more common in many rural areas than your post is suggesting.

Source: (in chinese, please use Google Translation) http://www.21ccom.net/articles/zgyj/fzyj/article_20120629627...

i've lived in China for a few years, and no one's ever seemed to care much about the one child policy. i just asked some people, and they said it depends on where you grew up, but that it hasn't ever really been a big deal for at least their lifetimes (~30 years).

you have to understand that laws here usually range from completely unenforced to strong discouragement with possible financial implications.

it wouldn't surprise me if there were incidents of the stuff you mention, but doesn't seem like any of it was ever common place.

The context you likely have is that of the more urbanized parts of China - not the rural towns and villages where most of the more extreme ("brutal and cruel") practices take place.

yeah, i know, i live in a big city. but i'm talking to some people that came from rural areas... no one's even heard of this stuff. that in no way means it doesn't happen - China's a really big place - but it certainly doesn't seem to be the status quo.

friends actually said the opposite: people in rural areas would tend to have a lot of kids trying for a boy (something about boys getting to go to school and being able to work the farm), though i guess that's getting better with the education and gender equality stuff.

did you grow up in one of those areas or something? or know people that did? which areas are you talking about?

Enforcement have been fairly lax in the last decade or two across the country. For every "unplanned" childbirth you can pay a one-off fine (Social Maintenance is the current euphemism) which is probably more like a poll tax based on your income (with caps in certain regions) and your offspring is readily accepted into society.

The main contention is that people who work in the public sector (which is giant in China) does not have the option because it is still, technically, illegal and will ruin your chances of promotion within the party or any state-owned enterprises. The law change merely levels the playing field for public sector workers so they have one less incentive to leave.

Also abandoning baby girls b/c they want a boy to carry on their name. Really interesting the effects of laws in the Macro.

At the risk of getting massively downvoted:

Most of the brutal and cruel acts you listed are a result of carrying a child to birth. Surely they would have noticed that they were pregnant and had the opportunity to abort at an earlier time. Better yet, why couldn't they just... not have children? Do they not have access to contraception?