(TibetanReview.net, Dec26’25) – Unable to criticise their government for fear of being persecuted on the outlandish charge of threatening to overthrow state power, Chinese citizens have made an outpouring of social media attacks on the person who was responsible for carrying out its decades-long draconian birth-control policy upon her recent death.
The death of Peng Peiyun has been met not by tributes but by castigation of the now abandoned policy on social media this week, reported Reuters Dec25.
State media praised Peng, head of China’s Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. However, the reaction on the country’s social media to her death in Beijing on Dec 21, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive, the report noted.
“Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person was stated to have posted on China’s popular micro-blog Weibo.
Several posts referenced the millions of unborn children affected by the policy, while others criticised the lasting consequences China is now facing due to decades of strict population control, noted liveindia.tv Dec 25.
China’s near-universal mandate of just one child per couple from 1980 through 2015 mandated local officials to compel women to undergo abortions and sterilizations.
Peng had especially focused her commission’s work on China’s vast countryside where large families were once seen as a goal for couples looking to ensure that they would be taken care of in their old age. Sons, who could carry on the family name, were favoured, leading to unwanted infant girls and even aborted female fetuses.
However, the policy, and its brutal implementation, was too successful for China’s own good. After falling behind India’s in 2023, China’s population declined last year to 1.39 billion.
It was with alarm that by the 2010s, China publicly shifted its views, saying the one-child policy should be eased. Currently, Beijing is trying to boost the flagging birth rate with childcare subsidies, longer maternity leave and tax benefits, while taxing condoms and pushing the youth to marry and have more children.
But despite these measures, concerns remain that China’s shrinking and ageing population will continue to weigh heavily on economic growth. A declining workforce, rising elderly care costs and mounting pension obligations are expected to put additional strain on already debt-burdened local governments.
During the one-child policy decades, violators faced steep fines that pauperised many families. They faced job losses and denial of state benefits as well other opportunities.