| Sports |
by JAMES
REYNOLDS
Chinese challenge one-child policy
Henan province: When Niu Jian Fang
and Jiao Na got married they knew China’s rules – one couple, one
child. A woman can only give birth once.
So, four years ago, Jiao Na got pregnant and gave birth to a son,
Bei Bei. And then a few minutes later she had a daughter, Jin Jin,
then another son Huan Huan, a second daughter, Ying Ying, and
finally another girl, Ni Ni.
She and her husband beat China’s one-child policy by having
quintuplets. But life has not been easy for them. Their small farm
does not bring in much money.
They have had to give Ying Ying to a relative because they cannot
afford to raise all five children on their own. Still, they
managed to beat China’s system. But they are reluctant to explain
how they did it.
“What’s your secret?” I ask them. Niu stares ahead. Jiao Na laughs
nervously.
“Difficult to say,” she answers.
No-one here in Buffalo village wants to say it openly, but
privately families admit they use fertility drugs to get round the
one-child limit. One woman says her parents-in-law put the drugs
into her food to make sure she would conceive twins.
This is a farming village – families need more than one child to
help till the land. Because of the fertility drugs, this village
has more twins on one single street than you would expect to find
in the entire village.
Just down the road from the quintuplets’ house, there is Lou Yuan
Mei and her two-year-old twins, Lin Kai and Lin Da, dressed in
identical orange jumpsuits. A few doors down, Wu Xiaofang is happy
to pick up and show off her baby twins, Jiao Jiao and Fei Fan.
Near the village, the records of the county maternity hospital are
filled with lists of multiple pregnancies. Dr Guo Gui Fen turns
the handwritten pages slowly and points to the name of each mother
who conceived twins or even triplets. “We’ve seen a huge rise in
the number of twins in recent years,” she says.
“That’s all because of the fertility drugs that are easily
available.”
Just across the road from the hospital, there is a chemist which
sells drugs to Buffalo village and to other nearby villages. I
head into the shop to test how easy it is to buy the tablets
without a prescription.
“One box?” the shop assistant asks. “Just one,” I reply. She asks
no more questions and heads off to get the last remaining box of
Clomifene Citrate capsules, which costs just 7.5 yuan (K3).
The assistant takes the money and hands me the box of tablets. It
is that simple to get hold of fertility drugs in this part of
China. The country introduced its one-child policy in 1980 because
it was worried about its ability to feed a growing population.
In towns and cities, the policy is often strictly enforced. Some
women are sterilised after they give birth to their first child.
Others have been forced to have abortions if they get pregnant
again.
Couples face heavy fines if they go ahead and have a second child.
There are some exemptions, however, with families from ethnic
minorities allowed more than one child. Some rural families are
also permitted to try for a son if their first child is a
daughter.
But those Chinese who are limited to just one child increasingly
resent the policy. In modern China, more and more people object to
the state telling them what to do.
On May 19, the residents of Bobai, a town in China’s southern
Guanxi province, rose up against the policy. Communist Party
officials started going house to house to collect fines for having
a second child. According to reports, the officials tried to
intimidate rule-breakers into paying, but locals fought back by
burning cars and destroying official buildings.
Many Chinese would prefer to avoid this kind of confrontation with
the state, which is still hugely powerful. That is why so many
choose to take fertility drugs in the hope of a multiple
pregnancy.
If you have all your children in one go in China, you do not have
to worry about a fine and a fight with the Communist Party. – BBC
The Chinese government insists its one-child policy has to remain
in place for many more years, as it believes it is the only viable
way of controlling the country’s population.
But with fertility drugs, the people of Buffalo village have now
found their own reliable way of beating the system.
 
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