China's little emperors: Medical consequences of China's one-child policy

摘要

Although the debates continue with regard to the behavioral impacts of China's one-child policy [1-7], there does not appear to be any uncertainty about the fact that China's one-child policy contributes to the rising prevalence of childhood obesity in China with its multiple undesirable sequelae [8-16]. The one-child policy in China has produced a generation of "little emperors" who are obese (Fig.l). When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, it inherited world's most populous country with half of a billion people, which was triple the population of the United States. Mao Zedong proclaimed having lots of people was "a very good thing"; it meant more workers and more soldiers and was a matter of national pride [17]. When the U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson thought that China would not be able to feed the population, an angry Mao fired back at the naysayers.