cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31178698
[This is a piece by Research Scholar of East Asia Studies in History Division, Lund University, Sweden.]
Unable to find a domestic spouse, some Chinese men have turned to “purchasing” foreign brides. The growing demand for these brides, particularly in rural areas, has fuelled a rise in illegal marriages. This includes marriages involving children and women who have been trafficked into China primarily from neighbouring countries in south-east Asia.
[…]
Determining the extent of illegal cross-border marriages in China is challenging due to the clandestine nature of these activities. But the most recent data from the UK’s Home Office suggests that 75% of Vietnamese human-trafficking victims were smuggled to China, with women and children making up 90% of cases.
[…]
The Woman from Myanmar, an award-winning documentary from 2022, follows the story of a trafficked Myanmar woman who was sold into marriage in China. The film exposes the harsh realities faced by many trafficked brides.
It captures not only the coercion and abuse many of these women endure, but also their struggle for autonomy and survival in a system that treats them as commodities. Larry, a trafficked woman who features in the documentary, explained that she saw her capacity to bear children as her pathway to survival.
[…]
These ‘unintentional demographic consequences’ were predictable, as the sex ratio became skewed toward males. Parents in rural areas were allowed a second child if the first was a daughter. In addition, having a girl became highly undesirable in China at the time, resulting in a rise in abortions of female fetuses,
Another effect was that the births of subsequent children after the first one went unreported or were hidden from authorities. These children- who, according to the authorities, should not have been born- were and still are banned from healthcare or free education, from travel or even from such simple things like using a library. The number of such children is not known, estimates have ranged from the hundreds of thousands to several million.
All this is very bad, and the authorities knew all this.
I never said that the demographic consequences were unpredictable, just that they were unintentional - the policy was put in place to control population growth. It had unfortunate secondary consequences which should have been mitigated, but they were not intentional.
Other than that I think your comment shows a strong and fair understanding of the issues. Every state, especially Socialist ones, has had their missteps - and the One-Child Policy was one of those.
As an example among countless others of your so-called ‘unintentional consequences,’ this is from 2012, when the one-child policy was still in place and there was outrage after Chinese woman forced to abort in seventh month