China: 400 Million Fewer People Because of One-Child Policy

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 20, 2011   |   6:24PM   |   Washington, DC

During a members-only meeting today with members of Congress at the Capital, a former health secretary in the Chinese government admitted the one-child policy has cost the nation as many as 400 million people.

That figure includes not only people who were likely not born because of the promotion of birth control and contraception, but the deaths of unborn children in abortions, forced abortions and infanticides. China sees as many as 37,000 abortions a day under the population control policy.

In a Budget Committee members-only meeting on Tuesday, Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a pro-life Kansas Republican, asked Gao Qiang, who served for two years as the Party Secretary for the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China, about the country’s population control policy. Through an interpreter, Gao told members in attendance that the population of China has 400 million fewer people that had the coercive family planning policy not been in place.

Gao also pointed out that China has lost more people than the overall population of the United States, estimated at 312 million.
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“I was shocked to hear a Chinese official admit how many people have been lost as a result of the country’s population control policy,” Congressman Huelskamp said. “The fact that this policy has resulted in the loss of more people than the overall population of the United States is an eye-opening figure.”

In raising the policy with the former health minister, Hueslkamp told LifeNews.com in an interview that he brought up the concerns the Chinese nation is already seeing in terms of not having enough people as active workers to take care of its increasingly aging population base. Huelskamp used the occasion to discuss how China faces a major demographic problem as a result of having so few young people to support the country’s aging population.

In an interview, he told LifeNews that Gao claimed China has enough people to care for their elderly and talked about older people frequently moving in with their children or grandchildren to provide them care. Gao told Huelskamp that he and his wife are each one of seven children — something not seen any longer in a nation where most people are under a one-child policy, and face a maximum of two children in rural areas.

Gao indicated China is examining loosening the policies, which will be the subject of a Congressional hearing on Thursday. He said 12 percent of the population is above the age of 60, though Huelskamp said he believed the figure to be higher. He said Gao indicated Chinese officials are aware of the impending population instability and the issues it will cause, but he shed little light on what the Chinese government will do to curb the problem.

The congressman told LifeNews the controversial remarks Vice President Joe Biden made during a speech in China recently, where he noted the population issues but failed to condemned the human rights abuses such as forced abortions and forced sterilizations, did not come up in the meeting.

Reggie Littlejohn, the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, a human rights group that monitors the policy and supports victims of it, has heard of the 400 million mark before.

“The Chinese Communist Party boasts that it has “prevented” 400 million births through the One Child Policy.    That’s greater than the entire population of the United States.  Most of the births “prevented” are girls.  There’s an entire nation of women not living in China today because of gendercide – the sex-selective abortion of baby girls.  This gendercide gives rise to human trafficking and sexual slavery, within China and from many surrounding nations,” Littlejohn explained.