“with only one child per family to bare the burdens of two generations before him, the financial and emotional stress could become overwhelming, even debilitating.”

It highlights the schism between rich and poor, between the proletariat and capitalist, which is not the working of a just society. Even on a more basic level, the one child policy doesn’t operate on a humanistic level- boys are favoured and the dynamics of family life have been reduced. When I was teaching English in china, I sometimes made the faux pas of asking my students the question, “how many brothers and sisters do you have?” The reply of course would be that they were an only child, and I could not help but think of this as a shame. When I look back to my childhood it is synonymous with playing and growing up with my brothers that makes it difficult to think that most children in China have not experience such an integral bond.