Rethinking Family Values

摘要

It's the central, pitiless fact of Chinese life, the one that holds everything else—life, work, love, politics—in its strangling grip: people. Way too many people. Mao thought big populations made a nation strong, and used to say that "every mouth comes with two hands attached." So China's population doubled under his leadership, leaving his political heirs to grapple with social problems multiplied by 1.2 billion. Not just unemployment, but vast armies of the unemployed; not just food shortages, but the threat of widespread famine; not just a few disgruntled students waving placards, but a million angry people suddenly thronging Tiananmen Square. Controlling the population is the crucial obsession of the Chinese authorities, "the central core policy that radiates out in all directions," as Hampshire College Sinologist Kay Ann Johnson puts it. And untold abuses have been committed in its name.