Mei Fong

An intimate investigation of the world's largest experiment in social engineering, revealing how China became what it is today, where it's inevitably headed, and the implications for the rest of the world China adopted its one-child policy in 1979, exercising unprecedented control over the reproductive habits of more than one billion people. China now seems poised to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy, but this law may be its undoing. The Soviet Union collapsed because of its wrongheaded attempt to engineer the market. What will come of China's attempt to engineer its population? Mei Fong reveals the true human impact of government-mandated family planning, traveling across China to meet the people who live with its consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality: unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only children supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages teeming with ineligible bachelors. This demographic imbalance, Fong argues, will lead to further economic and societal turmoil in the years to come. Fong has spent over a decade documenting the repercussions of the one-child policy on every sector of Chinese society. She offers a nuanced and candid account of government planning gone awry.

The Past and Future of China's Most Radical Experiment

One Child

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist offers an intimate investigation of China’s one-child policy and its consequences for families and the nation at large. For over three decades, China exercised unprecedented control over the reproductive habits of its billion citizens. Now, with its economy faltering just as it seemed poised to become the largest in the world, the Chinese government has brought an end to its one-child policy. It may once have seemed a shortcut to riches, but it has had a profound effect on society in modern China. Combining personal portraits of families affected by the policy with a nuanced account of China’s descent towards economic and societal turmoil, Mei Fong reveals the true cost of this controversial policy. Drawing on eight years of research, Fong reveals a dystopian legacy of second children refused documentation by the state; only children supporting their parents and grandparents; and villages filled with ineligible bachelors. A “vivid and thoroughly researched” piece of on-the-ground journalism, One Child humanizes the policy that defined China and warns that the ill-effects of its legacy will be felt across the globe (The Guardian, UK).

Mei Fong

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