28 China Single parents
Pariahs
The Economist February 27th 2016 Online dissent
Punching high BEIJING
An outspoken tycoon challenges Xi Jinping’s views BEIJING
Single mothers have a tough time in China. So do their children
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FTER more than three decades of often brutal interference by the government in citizens’ reproductive choices, it seemed something of a breakthrough when, in October, it decided to allow all couples to have two children. Previously, many had been limited to just one. Last month there was a further concession: children born in violation of the erstwhile rules would be given the registration document that is needed for everything from getting a place at school to opening a bank account. For children born out of wedlock, however, the nightmare of bureaucratic non-recognition persists. Attitudes to sex have been changing fast in China, but not the taboo surrounding extramarital births. The government imposes stringent penalties on the very few unmarried women brave enough to have children. Giving birth requires permission from family-planning authorities. They will not give it without proof of marriage. Violators usually have to pay the equivalent of several years’ working-class income. Then there is the problem of registering the child. Until last month it was impossible for many of those born in violation of family-planning rules to get identity papers. Now it is easier, as long as both parents can prove they are related to the child. But a mother who does not know who the baby’s father is, or who cannot convince the father to submit to a DNA test, is out of luck. The child cannot be registered. Hence it cannot obtain other vital documents such as an identity card (essential, not least, for travel on long-distance transport). To avoid such horrors, some unmarried women leave China in order to have their children. Their babies would then have foreign proof of birth, and a chance of growing up normally abroad. Xiao Min, a successful 36-year-old businesswoman who lives in Shanghai, decided to stay put. Her relatives acquiesced to her decision two years ago to have a child even though she had not found a husband. “I’m lucky to have so much support and a career that allows me to hire a full-time nanny,” says Ms Xiao. “I do not want to hurry to find someone to marry just so I can have children.” Ms Xiao is also lucky because she managed to persuade a friend to donate his sperm and enter into a sham marriage with her. Armed with a marriage certificate, she had a baby daughter without paying a hefty fine, or “social maintenance
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OST of China’s rich try to keep their heads down and avoid offending the Communist Party. Ren Zhiqiang (pictured), a retired property developer, is an exception. He is not only wealthy, but also has a microblog account with 38m followers—roughly the number of people living in California—whom he regales with snide comments on the country’s politics. What gives these added sting is that he is a party member. Adoring netizens call him “Big Gun Ren”. Despite President Xi Jinping’s onslaught on dissent since he took power in 2012, Mr Ren has kept up his criticisms. This makes him all the more extraordinary. In recent days his microblogs have taken on Mr Xi himself, commenting scornfully on the president’s inspection tour on February 19th of the party’s main mouthpieces: the People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television. Mr Xi reminded them to toe the party line, or, as he put it, to keep “the surname ‘Party’”. Mr Ren took issue. “When all media have surnames and do not represent the people’s interests, the people will be cast
aside into a forgotten corner!” he complained on his microblog hosted by Weibo, a Chinese social-media site. In another post Mr Ren asked: “Since when has the people’s government been turned into the party’s government?” He said that taxpayers’ money should not be wasted on things that do not provide them with services. Mr Ren’s posts were quickly deleted. A website run by the party committee of Beijing’s city government published a commentary that accused him of displaying “brazen anti-party spirit” and of representing a “capitalist troublemaking faction” trying to create Western-style government in China. Mr Ren appears unfazed. Another of his posts hinted that he would like to take the website and its owners to court. Plenty of other bloggers have fallen foul of the law for taking digs at the party. But Mr Ren’s prominence may afford him (and even his Weibo account, to which he has posted more than 90,000 times) some protection. He even remains an adviser to the capital’s government—one of the few worth listening to.
Big Gun takes on a big’un fee” in official language. (In July, when asked by reporters why single parents were punished this way, a senior familyplanning official insisted the fines were needed to maintain “reproductive order”.) Most women, however, try their best to avoid extramarital births altogether. Abortions are readily available. Those who do not want to terminate their pregnancies are sometimes forced to do so by officials. Mei Fong, a former Beijing correspondent
ofthe Wall Street Journal who wrote a book about the one-child policy, says the cost of raising a child on one’s own is such that it is usually only rich people who try. “I want to make my parents happy and I want to have a baby,” says a 30-year-old woman in Beijing who works as a lowpaid office assistant. “But if I’m not married and can’t pay the fines, the child would become like a ghost, without legal standing. How could I do that to my own child?” 7