Source: guancha.cn

The Chinese government this year revised its strict family planning policy.

Since the late 1970s most Chinese families were only allowed to have one child. Now, Chinese couples will now be able to have two children, if one of the parents is an only child.

While this is a welcome development for many Chinese families, some Chinese parents who are victims of the old policy are now telling their stories.

Losing a child is the most painful ordeal a parent can experience, an even worse is losing an only child. Parents in China rely on only children to take care of them in old age.

One victim, 60-year-old Xie, whose only child died seven years ago, now faces old age with little in the way of financial support. Her only daughter was 29 when she died.

“We Chinese always consider the child as the most important thing. If the child is gone, the whole family breaks down,” Xie told the media.

 

“At the time, the slogan went that ‘birth control is good, the state will look after the old’. I hope the government shall do what it says,”

 

“My biggest fear is that some day I might die at home and no one will know.”

Chinese parents who have lost their only child are referred to as ”shidu” meaning “lost only one” in English.

There are reportedly a million parents like Xie in China, a number that grows by about 76,000 each year. And now there are calls for the government to increase compensation made to them.

“For the country, we have sacrificed our small families, broken off our bloodline and now live in eternal regret.”

Another parent, 50-year-old Shi Hui, whose only son died in January last year of cancer, complains about how much the government has agreed to pay them:

“We want to live in an old people’s home with other people like us,”

 

“We don’t want to live in an ordinary old people’s home. When other people’s children come to visit… we wouldn’t be able to take that.”

Another victim, 59-year-old Zhang Yulan who lost her only son 12 years ago in a car accident when he was just 23 years old tells her story:

“When I was pregnant with my second child they showed up,” Zhang said, referring to the local family planning officials. “But since I lost my son, no one from the family planning department has come to talk to me in years.”

 

“I am not afraid of dying, but I cannot afford to lie at a sickbed for a long time.”

Jiang, whose 25-year-old daughter died while on a PHD program in the US, recounted how she felt when she was told her only child died in a car accident:

“It was over,”

 

“I was never afraid of any difficulties because we had a child and she was our hope. Now everything has lost meaning to us.”

 

“We did what the government wanted,”

 

“If the one-child policy has led to economic prosperity, why can’t they take a little money to compensate us for our loss? They can’t only take the dividend, right?”

Yi Fuxian, a University of Wisconsin scientist whose book A Big Country in an Empty Nest describes the damage of China’s family planning restrictions comments that:

“In the future, tens of millions of Chinese people will be affected by this phenomenon,”

 

“Parents will lose hope and when they get old, nobody will take care of them. Because every kid is exposed to deadly risks, every one-child family is walking a tightrope.”