Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515-0128

TESTIMONY OF HARRY WU
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE LAOGAI RESEARCH FOUNDATION

on December 14, 2004
before the

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
of the
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. I would first like to request that the book Better Ten Graves Than One Extra Birth, published by the Laogai Research Foundation, be entered into the congressional record as part of my testimony.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am honored to testify here again on the topic of China’s population control policy. I have testified in front of Congress on China’s one-child policy several times in the past, and unfortunately the policy is still enforced in China.

Despite recent supposed reforms, China’s population policy still does not conform to UN principles. The one-child policy is the most pervasive source of human rights violations in China today. It affects every family, every woman. With few exceptions, only married couples that obtain advance approval, i.e. a birth permit, may legally have a child, even if it is their first child. A majority of Chinese women are required to use intrauterine devices (IUDs). Violators, if discovered to be pregnant, are coerced into having an abortion. Most violators of the one-child policy are forced to undergo sterilization. Doctors who do not perform IUD insertion or sterilization, or who fake these operations, are jailed. Family members of violators are often jailed if they do not reveal the violator’s whereabouts. Despite relaxation of certain aspects of China’s family planning regulations, enforcement of the one-child policy continues to be coercive.

As published, China’s newly-promulgated State Family Planning Law is a violation of reproductive rights as outlined by the UN Charter, UNDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and the Cairo Declaration, all of which China is a signatory to. All of these documents clearly state that family planning should be the responsibility of individuals. However, China uses a system of quotas and regulations to dictate how many children can be legally born and where. Ultimately, individuals and families, not governments, should decide on the parity and spacing of having children.

China, despite its economic development over the past 20 years, remains a poor, rural nation. Most Chinese are unconcerned with the rights of religion or the right to post an article on a website. A majority of Chinese are not concerned about human rights violations in Tibet. Indeed, China traditionally is not a rights-based culture, and most Chinese are simply ignorant of the concept of human rights. However, the one-child policy is almost universally hated by the Chinese public. The desire to have children, specifically male offspring, drives this contempt.

Chinese Communists leaders, such as Jiang Zemin, have often used the excuses of economic well-being and stability to justify China’s repressive family planning regulations. They have used the ratio of China’s massive population to its small amount of arable land to argue that harsh measures are required to restrict the population and ensure that there is enough food for everyone to eat. However, this is an empty, baseless argument. What China needs most in order to thrive is a free political and social system. The example of Japan or Taiwan can be used to refute China’s argument- with its population of more than 1.3 billion, 22% of the world and only just over 9% of arable land of the world, Japan and Taiwan enjoys relatively prosperous economic conditions and stability. Unlike China, Japan and Taiwan has a free and open political and social system that drives its success.

Unfortunately, there is a double standard with regard to the rights of Chinese families. Many Western academics, unwilling to criticize the government that grants them access to the data their careers depend on, have adopted a "Yes, but" attitude toward the one-child policy, stating that human rights violations are aberrations with regard to this policy. Indeed, ever since atrocities related to the one-child policy were first reported in the 1980s, many have argued that coercion was a thing of the past. However, for the last 25 years, this has simply not been the case.

Every year, the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) receives thousands of applications for asylum from victims of China’s coercive population control measures. Congress views China’s one-child policy as a form of persecution and mandated that the BCIS set aside 1,000 visas per year specifically for its victims. China is the only nation whose citizens are eligible for asylum based on population control-related persecution.

Thousands of abandoned baby girls, victims of the one-child policy, are adopted from China into U.S. homes each year (about 50,000 over the past decade). Research shows that a vast majority of these girls are abandoned because their parents want to avoid sterilization and the heavy fines of the one-child policy. Adopting families have all been to China, and they have a keen understanding of the problem. Their adoption informs their entire social network as well; their neighbors, friends, family, and coworkers all see first-hand the impact of China’s one-child policy. As the numbers of adoptions continue to increase, the social awareness of the horrors of the one-child policy will continue to grow.

After the introduction of the Population and Family Planning Law on September 1, 2002, Chinese authorities declared that all family planning violators would be fined a so-called "social alimony" instead of being subject to other punishments. There have been various unwritten rules for how family planning violators should be punished. These include admonishments that the whole family should be punished for one individual’s "crime", forced abortion and sterilization, promoting IUD insertion as one’s duty, and the destruction of violators’ homes, etc. The implementation of these different forms of punishment has varied in locations throughout China- while each location has attempted to carry out measures in the spirit of the central government’s policy; each has had its own measures to prevent "illegal births". The one-child policy is a national policy mandated by the top levels of the CCP government, which holds all officials of every level and every work unit responsible for carrying out the policy, from the provincial government level to the tiniest of villages. Each work unit’s bureaucratic leader must use their power to enforce the policy and make sure orders are carried out, or they will be punished by the Communist Party or the government.

This year, the Laogai Research Foundation obtained a document of Jieshi Town, Guangdong Province from 2003. This Document No. 43 of the Township shows how the local government has harshly implemented China’s family planning law.

Jieshi, located on the northern part of Lufeng City, Guangdong Province, has an area of 124 km and a population of 200,000. Document No. 43 of Jieshi Township from August 26, 2003 gave orders that the fall 2003 family planning assignment should begin on August 26, and within 35 days (ending on September 30), the goals must be achieved: to sterilize 1,369, fit 818 with an IUD, induce labor for 108, and carry out 163 abortions. During this period, each five days there should be a count and each ten days there should be an evaluation, and there must be a 100% success rate. Party secretaries and village heads who failed to fulfill this task would have their salaries cut by half, and other responsible cadres would suffer the withholding of their entire salary.

One regulation of Document No. 43 stipulates: "sterilized women will be compensated with 50 yuan, and women will be compensated with 300 yuan for late abortions". The document also demands: "in the countryside, sterilization for all women with two girls, and induced labor for late pregnancy. Overcome difficulties with creativity, so that all fall actions can be implemented successfully, and the ground can be set for yearly population control planning".

In the spirit of the document, the leaders of the township asked all villagers to be vigilant and to denounce all "unlawful" pregnancies and births.

Sanitized language such as "clear the repertory with avant-garde and creative methods", "reach our goal in a timely fashion and meet the required quantity and quality standards" is used in a document that deals with human lives. "Focus on late inducement" has also been emphasized. This sounds more like killing than giving birth. According to Chinese law, those who sexually molest women are guilty of infringing upon another person’s body. It is ironic that today the government forces women to undergo sterilization and abortions in the name of the law.

Many Western demographers and organizations, such as the UNFPA, have hailed the 2002 family planning law as ushering in an era of reform. They believe the law shifts China’s population control policy away from human rights abuses. However, the law does not discourage the use of quotas, and it keeps the "one-vote veto system", thus retaining two of the fundamental causes of such abuses. Document No. 43 of Jieshi Township is an important piece of evidence proving that quotas for sterilizations and abortions continue to be implemented in China.

The Population and Family Planning Law codifies the implementation of family planning policy in the constitution. Among reforms included are guarantees of rights to healthcare access and information. In certain areas, and in certain circumstances, birth permits are no longer necessary. Yet the law does not grant any new or confirm any previous reproductive freedoms.

Indeed, upon completion of China’s 2000 census, Chinese officials realized they had reached an unthinkable goal: the total fertility rate had reached 1.8, which is below the natural replacement rate. In other words, China was about to achieve zero population growth. This certainly allows for a more liberal policy. For example, today in many urban areas, such as Shenzhen and Shanghai, no prior approval is necessary for a couple’s first-born child.

Unfortunately, any optimism related to the amount of coercion involved is misplaced. Despite the fact that, under the law, individuals have the right of access to contraceptive information, these same individuals are not allowed to make their own choices to not use birth control, or, for example, to use condoms or pills as opposed to IUDs. Under the law, couples do not have the right to choose their form of birth control, let alone the number or spacing of their children.

In addition, enforcement is still as strict as ever. Any out-of-plan births are met with coercion. According to officials from the SFPC, renamed the State Family Planning and Population Commission, there will be no significant change in the enforcement or implementation of the one-child policy.

When confronted with evidence of coercion and the abuse of laws, officials state that abuses are a result of rogue actions by local cadres. Yet the new law does nothing to reign in their actions against violators. It does denounce opportunistic cadres who accept bribes to fake sterilization or birth permits. It calls for punishing health workers who inform couples of the gender of their child. However, the law does nothing to prohibit or discourage many types of human rights abuses. It does not prohibit forced sterilizations, forced abortions, infanticide, the detention of violators or their families, or the confiscation or destruction of property. Most important, the law maintains the use of quotas and targets, as well as the "one-vote veto" system, described in our book, the engine that drives cadres to commit human rights abuses.

The case of Mao Hengfeng, a long-time campaigner against China’s coercive family planning policies and other human rights violations in China, is another example of the continuing harsh implementation of the one-child policy. The group Human Rights in China has reported that Mao has in recent months been subjected to abusive treatment in a reeducation-through-labor camp, or RTL, in Shanghai, including being bound hand and foot and suspended in mid-air, and being subjected to severe beatings and other forms of torture.

After giving birth to her second child in the late 1980s in violation of Chinese law, Mao was dismissed from her job at a soap factory, and she began a lengthy court battle for her right to work. She was seven months pregnant with her third child at the time of a key court hearing and was told by the trial judge that he would rule in her favor if she agreed to have an abortion. She then had an abortion against her wishes, but the court ultimately ruled against her, saying that because she had violated China’s family planning policy, the factory had a right to dismiss her. Mao then embarked on a 15-year struggle for her right to work and other basic rights. In April of this year, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau ordered that Mao serve 18 months in an RTL because of her relentless petitioning.

In addition to being a violation of the basic rights of Chinese citizens, the one-child policy has a serious impact on Chinese society in terms of a significant gender imbalance. This problem has been widely documented in the international media. While the world’s overall male-to-female birth ratio, which measures the number of males born for every 100 females born, is between 103 and 106 males, China’s ratio was calculated in 2000 to have reached about 117-134. When this ratio is superimposed on China’s massive population, the imbalanced ratio translates into almost about a million "missing" baby girls per year.

While China’s male-female sex ratio has traditionally been tilted toward males, 30 years ago it was only slightly higher than the world average. However, since the advent of the one-child policy, the imbalance has grown steadily with each study or census conducted.

Influenced by traditional culture and socioeconomic conditions, including the fact that there is no insurance system or social welfare net for people in rural areas, many Chinese families, especially in rural areas, insist on having at least one male child. They will not stop having children until they achieve their goal. Despite the biological facts of procreation, which place the onus of sex selection on the male, women heavily bear this responsibility in China.

According to the 2000 census, with the exception of Tibet and Xinjiang, every province in China exceeded the world average in terms of the male/female ratio. The ratio was most imbalanced in the following nine provinces/autonomous regions: Fujian, Shaanxi, Guangxi, Hunan, Anhui, Hubei, Guangdong, and Hainan. The imbalance was highest in Hainan and Guangdong, with ratios of 135.6 and 130.6, respectively.

Researchers have established three principal reasons for the gender imbalance: sex-selective abortion, female infanticide and neglect, and finally abandonment and underreporting.

Despite the government’s efforts to end it, the practice of sex-selective abortion remains. According to Zeng Yi, a one-time Peking University population expert now at Duke University, "Abortion based on gender selection reduced the number of girls expected to be born by one-third, even one-half." Couples determined to have male offspring are able to determine a fetus’s sex and have an abortion. Family planners, who are eager to reduce population growth, are unlikely to prohibit an abortion simply because they fear it is due to gender. Indeed, our research has not been unable to uncover any instance of prosecution or punishment for such activity. Most couples have a sex-selective abortion after using prenatal screening. Over 10,000 ultrasound machines are produced in China yearly. Screening can cost as little as $4. In Zhanjiang, a city in Guangdong province, over 70,000 women engaged in prenatal screening from 1997 to 2003. While data is unavailable to determine how many of these women went on to have an abortion, the city experienced a male/female birth ratio of 147 during this period.

After the 1949 Communist revolution, infant abandonment declined until the adoption of the one-child policy. Infanticide is occasionally carried out by family planning officials and doctors under their direction as the ultimate means of "preventing a birth". In a survey publicized in January 2001, in some remote or impoverished areas where potential parents are unable to pay for ultrasound tests, or the test results are inaccurate, committing infanticide against female newborns is used as a last resort. However, neglect is a much more significant factor than infanticide. In one study completed in 1994, statistics indicated that with regard to infant deaths in rural areas, "60 percent of deceased male children had been taken to the hospital in the 24 hours before their death, as opposed to 40 percent of female children. According to the law, child abandonment is illegal, but prosecution of abandonment is extremely lacking. Abandoned children are at a significant health risk, and an even greater risk of not being registered. Of those children that make it to orphanages, up to half of them die within their first few months.

The one-child policy currently discourages legal adoption of children by Chinese by treating adoptions as no different than a birth. Thus, a family may only adopt a child if it conforms to the one-child policy. Violators, who adopt "out of plan", are treated as if they have had a non-approved birth, which would make them subject to significant fines and sterilization. This policy is intended to prevent the circumvention of the one-child policy. The government worries that if it were to liberalize adoption policy, families could pass on their "black children" (called heihaizi in Chinese) to relatives or neighbors who could then in turn officially adopt them.

In the United Kingdom, The Mirror of February 13, 2001 printed a series of photos showing how a newborn baby girl in Hunan who was abandoned in a street, naked, and who had frozen to death. Marie Claire magazine also reported on this story in June 2001. Only three hours after the photographer reported this to the police was the baby carried away. Almost no passers-by paused and inquired about the baby. Brits and Americans who read reports about this incident were shocked by the photos and criticized China, saying that its inhuman family planning policy leads to many abandoned girl babies, rendering the Chinese callous and indifferent to human life. The CARE organization in the United Kingdom called for support of the "International Development Bill" to seek new norms and to curb the expenditure of British aid funds toward China’s family planning policy, which it charged ignores basic human rights.

China’s one-child policy also engenders criminal behavior such as corruption, bribery and human trafficking. Corrupt family planning cadres and doctors abuse their authority to exact fines and accept bribes to give couples birth permit certificates, fake sterilization certificates, fake IUD checkup certificates, etc. Meanwhile, the surplus in female infants and the sex ratio imbalance has led to an increase in the trafficking of infants and women. It is estimated that after a decade, about 30 million Chinese bachelors will not be able to find a wife. This dire situation will result in instability even across the border and will have a negative influence on China’s neighboring countries.

The Chinese government uses the slogan "get rid of poverty and rush to well-to-do status" to persuade peasants to accept its forced family planning policy. However, little or no efforts are being invested in the areas of medicine, sanitation, education and employment for China’s rural population. No improvements have been achieved in the retirement and pension systems for China’s peasants. Instead, the government has used a huge amount of money and human resources to build up a strong contingent to implement its family planning policy.

Coercion in China’s family planning policy is not sporadic or unauthorized, but rather an essential tool used by family planning cadres to meet ambitious targets. Coercion is systemic, widespread, and appalling. As international law clearly stipulates, the right of families to choose the number and spacing of their children is clear and inviolable, and this right is clearly denied to Chinese citizens. As long as China’s one-child policy remains in place, women in China will continue to lack control over their own bodies and their own reproductive choices, and the state will continue to dictate when they will be fitted with IUD devices, sterilized, or forced to have an abortion. This is clearly a policy that should be abhorrent to the international community, and one that we must work to eliminate.

Tragedies due to the one-child policy continue to be played out one after the other, and the societal consequences of "family planning" are gradually manifesting themselves. If we are unable to put a stop to this problem, it means that we have still not been successful in terms of our efforts to promote human rights in China. The cruel and unjust methods the Chinese government carries out to enforce its population policy constitute a human rights violation of the worst kind. I call on the Chinese government to end its brutal practices of forced population control and seek to implement voluntary and non-violent population programs. And I urge the American people, the United States Congress, and the U.S. government to help put a stop to China’s barbaric policies.