Why I don't like One-Child Policy

Recently, Chen Guangchen, the blind lawyer who was saved by the US ambassador Jiahui Luo has come to the media exposure and show how a modern government ignore human rights in the basic human nature: birth.He was jailed and tortured by Chinese government for his brave behavior in helping rural residents who failed to protect their rights, of which the the right of having a second child in one  family is the primary one.

Of all the facts that affect us, the most urgent one is the 4-2-1 effects. The 4-2-1 effect refers to situation that when children who were the only child in one family grows up and have their own child, they have four parents to take care and one child to raise up. That is, one couple has to take care of at least five people in one time. As Chinese people value family bond and there was no mature healthcare system for senior people, the responsibility of taking care of seniors falls on to the young couple, which cause enormous to middle-aged person.

Take myself for example, I am the only one child at home and I have the responsibility to take care of my parents when they are old. That means I cannot choose whatever career I want, like staying in another country doing reporting. When  I get married, if my husband is the only child for his parents (which is mostly likely because if you marry another single child, you can have two children instead of one, this is the new policy), so we have to take care of four parents and two children. I cannot imagine how I can solve this economic puzzle by my poor payment.

Natural disasters aggravate this problem when parents lost their only child in the middle age or even senior years. For instance, in the Wenchuan earthquake that happened in May12, 2008, more than 680,000 people were killed, among whom 5335 were students in primary school and high school. The number 5335 were based on families who report the loss of children for applying for relief and help, so it was far smaller than the real number since many families were killed as a whole and many families did not apply. Couples who lost their children and want to have another one have to deal with problems like the increasing risk for pregnant women over 35, and many husbands or wives have done the sterilization surgery so that it is difficult for them to be pregnant again. As a result, the Chinese government introduced the special policy there---allowing couples who lost their children to bear another child, and provide healthcare to those pregnant women in related to the psychological and physical problems due to depression and age risk. 

This also leads to a problem of a lack of bide in China, when bachelor are hard to find their wives. The ratio of boys to girls in mainland China reached 117:100 in the year 2000. And because the Chinese tradition requires men to pay a certain amount of money to their wife’s family when they are getting married, men in poorer communities are hard to find wives. As a result, women trafficking became their solution. The movie <Blind Mountain> tells a story of a female graduate who was abducted to a village and was forced to have babies with a guy. After more than ten years of struggling she finally got connected with her family and was let to go. It was reported by the Xinhua net that in the year 2011, the Ministry of Public security has arrested 3195 groups of women abducting and trafficking, saving 1,5458 women and 8660 children. We have no idea how those women who were failed to be rescued or even unknown by the public and were still living with the trafficking family.

This concern affects me even I am not suffered from any natural disaster. Before I left for another country, like most of other parents, they forbid me to take single trip, even a two-hour single trip, jut because they are afraid of losing me. Now I am in a different country. And before I came to US, I told myself that my primary goal to be here is survival, to be more specific, to be alive. This is ridiculous but I do keep it in my mind. Because I am the only child in my family, they invest all the savings on me so that I can glorify the whole family, if by any chance I let them lose everything, I don't know how will they survive. My grandmother also told me this when I was packing the luggage, I am sure this is the fact.

Randomness is the only rule?

Book review of the Drunkard’s Walk: how randomness rules our lives

For me, the definition of a good book is that it inspires me to read more books on a subject, instead of making me feel that I’ve learned all I want to know. The Drunkard’s Walk: How randomness rules our lives definitely fits this definition.

There are ten chapters in this book, and author Leonard Mlodinow tackles  mathematics and logic first, then statistics, and ends up with psychology. Meanwhile physics, especially astrophysics is woven into every chapter. The book is full of surprises even for a person who loves these topics, because Mlodinow connects them in such a fluid and smart way.

Even though I’ve read many other books about philosophy, physics, mathematics and logic reading this book was exciting because The Drunkard’s Walk  connected topics in new ways, filled gaps in what I knew and aroused more questions. For example, I am fascinated by ancient Greek philosophers for their balanced, beautiful and intelligent concepts and debates about the world. I am saddened that the ancient Roman domination brought about the demise of the great Greek culture to a degree.

This book challenged my thinking by explaining how the concepts of statistics arose from Roman culture because they were practical, and cared more about actual lives, and realized that statistics were both useful and sexy. Greeks, on the other hand, believed that gods are everything and that everything is determined by universal rules, so there is no need to talk about statistics – not to mention randomness, a concept that could not coexist with the Greek idea of gods.

The Drunkard’s Walk reminds me of one of my favorite Chinese books, and the two would be great to read together.  The title of the second book is Does God Throw Dice? The history of atomic physics.

The author of the earlier book, Tianyuan Cao, though claiming to be an atheist he seems to admit the existence of God. Much of intellectual debate through the ages, and certainly high-level physics, boils down to a debate about whether god exists.

The main focus of Does God Play Dice? is how the quest to understand the nature of light – as wave, particle, or both --led to many big steps in modern or late physics. And, as the reference to a game of chance suggests, this is also a book about whether randomness exists, and whether randomness actually paves the way for every discovery. Physicists seeking to understand light, for instance, discovered electro-magnetic waves and wave-particle dualism. The most interesting part, to me at least, is that without randomness or the understanding of the randomness, the laws of physics would be a less standardized and more random.

Leonard Mlodinow, the author of the the Drunkard’s Walk, approaches many of the same questions from the opposite direction and describes how the rules of mathematics, or logic, yields randomness. As physics depends heavily on math it discusses it from time to time, these two are perfect match for me. Why does randomness exist? Is there any point in making plans for the weekend? Can weather reports be trusted? Mlodinow puts forth some answers in this book.

The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was that it persuaded me to see the world as more random than before. I now understand why some physicists commit suicide after learning that there is no universal law to explain everything that happens in this universe; in my own life, I understand waves of hopelessness better.

But I haven’t given up. After all, Issac Newton and Albert Einstein each made massively important discoveries during their failed quest to discover a unifying principle. I am looking to what I might discover while looking for something else.