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The episode discussed on today's Sound Judgment: The Heist: https://apps.publicintegrity.org/theheist/Episode 2: Mnuchin's World was reported and hosted by Sally Herships. Our editor was Curtis Fox, with help from consulting editor Alison MacAdam and Center for Public Integrity's Tax Project editor Allan Holmes. Production help from Lucas Brady Woods, Brett Forrest, Camille Petersen, and Ali Swenson. Theme music and original score by composer Nina Perry and performed by musicians Danny Keane, Dawne Adams, and Oli Langford. Engineer is Peregrine Andrews. The Heist is executive produced by Sally Herships and the Center for Public Integrity's Mei Fong. Sound Judgment episodes mentioned in today's episode:Snap Judgment's Glynn Washington: Lessons from a Master StorytellerBone Valley: How to Create a True Crime Podcast That Makes a DifferenceHow to Pitch an Audio Documentary and the Unusual Origin of a This American Life Story with Katie ColaneriEmotional Bravery on Last Day with Stephanie Wittels Wachs***About Sally Herships:Sally Herships is an award-winning freelance audio journalist and Director of the Audio Program at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Recently she covered the pandemic and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for NPR's National Desk. She's a frequent contributor to the “Indicator," a daily economics podcast from NPR's Planet Money Team. Her reporting has been included in multiple shows and outlets including the BBC, The New York Times, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, WNYC and Studio 360. The Heist, an investigative series examining President Trump's 2017 tax bill, which Sally hosted and co-Executive Produced, was honored as a finalist for the 2022 DuPont awards. The judges wrote: “A forensic review of the 2017 Tax bill, The Heist managed to be both an informative and wildly entertaining”Connect with Sally on LinkedIn or Twitter or at https://www.sallyherships.com/***Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter, our twice-monthly publication about creative choices in audio storytelling. Follow Elaine on LinkedInHelp us find and celebrate today's best hosts!Who's your Sound Judgment dream guest? Share them with us! Write us: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.***Work with us!We make original podcasts for NGOs, purpose-driven brands, and universitiesWe also offer podcast strategy and consulting servicesOr contact us about our public media and individual training services for content creators and on-air talentVisit podcastallies.com or email us at allies@podcastallies.com for more information. ***Credits Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC. Host: Elaine Appleton GrantProject Manager: Tina BassirSound Designer: Andrew ParrellaIllustrator: Sarah Edgell
Households Of Faith Pr Sarah Cheong & Pr Zew Mei Fong 26 Feb 2023 Online Service 1 by Glad Tidings
For the first time in six decades, China's population shrank last year. It's resulted in growing fears around the future of the country's economy and has pushed government authorities and private companies to launch incentive programs to boost the population. Just last week, government officials in the Chinese province of Sichuan announced they would allow couples to have an unlimited number of children. It's a radical turn from the days of the one-child policy, which was in place from 1980 to 2015. According to Mei Fong, author of One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment, that policy has influenced a generation of young people to push back against societal expectations around marriage and childbearing. This week on Nothing is Foreign, we dig into those changing attitudes and how they might help us understand the population decline we're seeing in China today. Featuring: Mei Fong, author of One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/nothing-is-foreign-transcripts-listen-1.6732059
The world's most populous country hit a historic turning point. China announced its first population decline in six decades with 850,000 fewer people at the end of last year than in 2021. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Mei Fong joined Geoff Bennett to discuss the cause of the decline and what it could mean for the global economy. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
The world's most populous country hit a historic turning point. China announced its first population decline in six decades with 850,000 fewer people at the end of last year than in 2021. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Mei Fong joined Geoff Bennett to discuss the cause of the decline and what it could mean for the global economy. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
The world's most populous country hit a historic turning point. China announced its first population decline in six decades with 850,000 fewer people at the end of last year than in 2021. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Mei Fong joined Geoff Bennett to discuss the cause of the decline and what it could mean for the global economy. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
In this special episode of The A to Z English Podcast, we talk with Jonathan from Costa Rica, a dedicated English student and an active member of our Whatsapp group. (Link here: https://forms.gle/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7)Website Link: https://atozenglishpodcast.com/?p=1739It's a great conversation, so you won't want to miss it!Share your thoughts about today's interview in our Whatsapp group or tell us if you think you have something interesting to talk about. Perhaps you could be our next guest on the podcast!If you could take a minute and complete a short survey about the podcast, we would be very appreciative. You can find the survey here: https://forms.gle/HHNnnqU6U8W3DodK8We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes.Intro/Outro Music by Eaters: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eaters/the-astronomers-office/agents-in-coffee-shops/Full Transcript: Jonathan from Costa RicaKevin: Welcome to an A to Z English listener interview. Today we're talking with Jonathan Gutierrez who is in Costa Rica and is one of our listeners. And he's going to tell us today about his English learning experience using A to Z English and all of the other sources that he did. So Jonathan, nice to see you. it's night time there right?Jonathan: Okay, it's nice to see you guys. So um thank you for having me here.Kevin: Oh you're welcome. it's great to have you on the show. Jack: Yeah thanks for coming and I appreciate it. Kevin: Yeah it's already evening there. Did you have your dinner tonight?Jonathan: Uh not yet. I just arrived at home a few minutes ago.Kevin: Yeah?Jonathan: I was working today, so I just arrived at home maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago. But it's okay.Kevin: Well thank you for finding time to join us then for us it's Monday daytime of course time zones are funny, so Jonathan you're in Costa Rica.I've never been to Costa Rica though I have had a couple of friends that went there. Actually one of my good friends from university, he and his uh girlfriend at the time, now wife, they went to Costa Rica many years ago, maybe almost 20 years ago and they were teaching English for six months or a year, so I know English education is quite big in Costa Rica. How, where or when did you first start learning English? Was it in schools or did you have a tutor or just the internet or where did you start? Jonathan: Yeah I started when I in high school. Okay so I'm learning a few things in high school. Maybe I don't uh that I feel for example um I love the idiom or stuff like that. Sure maybe a couple years ago that I started to return again to learning English and I joined what's the room with Robin Shaw? So I started my new challenge. I changed my mind because I want um to get a bilingual job and I think I start to practice a little bit more. I forgot all the rules and English grammars. I love vocabulary so it was a little bit insane you know. Maybe not because I forgot so a lot of things um so it was something new for me. Let's start again. They start with uh maybe kids stuff um and it was pretty good. Robin helped me a lot. Kevin: I'm curious. if you said you started again because you forgot everything, I actually I know Costa Rica is a Spanish-speaking country and I used to speak a little bit of Spanish. I studied Spanish in university. But like you I stopped using it and I totally forgot everything once you started to study again. Was it easier than the first time? Did you start to remember things?Jonathan: Yeah it's quite something funny because when I'm trying to learn again um I remember oh I remember this but how can we use everything. So I forgot for example um singular verbs, plural, past tense and stuff like that. Yeah so it started again. I practiced a lot um every day and yeah I found a bunch of friends and I tried to do my best every day to learn English and my one of my goals was get bilingual because I am native speaker Spanish speaker all right good yeah. it was a big challenge you know. it was pretty awesome. I was excited to learn again English, so I decided to start again and practice and practice every day. Jack: That's great! Yeah do you use English in your job right now? Jonathan: Yes I've been working in a call center for around five months oh nice and is for um I am customer service agent for us company so it's something new for me and I'm taking calls every day for…Jack: So are the people that calling you are they they're Americans then?Jonathan: Yes.Kevin: And I know speaking another language over the phone can sometimes be more difficult than speaking together with a person because you can't see them. You don't know what their facial expressions or what their body is doing. What things have been the hardest for you doing a phone job where you're only listening to people speaking English and Americans have many different styles of English. Some are very fast. Some are very slow. What was what's the hardest thing for you in in your job?Jonathan: All right um I guess that's the listening stuff because when the customer speaks.Kevin: They start to speak and start to speak uh faster right?Jonathan: Faster and you need to get all the information in a few seconds and trying to avoid. Kevin: Do you mean trying umJonathan: Yeah trying I need to improve a lot my listening skills to avoid this kind of situation because it's a customer service job I mean right we need to focus on listening and try to get the best message with the customer and assist the customer and sometimes we can hear um maybe i'll set customers and we need to okay slow down, take it easy and assist the customer.Kevin: Well that sounds like our podcast would be helpful for listening skills. Then so I'm hopeful that we are helping you. There that's great yeah what was the…Jack: Uh could you could you give us an example of maybe like a very challenging phone call or a uh experience that you've had at the call center? Is there one memorable experience? Jonathan: Yeah we got a lot of accents from us so maybe for example when I try to speak uh when a customer uh he got access from example for Texas or um it's so hard to understand but I try to do my best and when decide to speak it faster and faster, it's hard to understand. But I always do my best every day.Jack: Yeah so like a southern Texas accent would be hard to understand but like in eastern in the east uh people speak quite quickly in New York and yeah Massachusetts in that area yeah people speak very fast, very quickly. Jonathan: You got it uh by the way um well our customers are from the east coast uh Massachusetts, Boston, New York and New Jersey yeah and Philadelphia um and I find that listening also can sometimes be more difficult than speaking because there's so many ways to say the same thing and one person says it this way, another person says it a different way and you know one way to say it and so you're correct you know how to do it but they use a different or a different way and so it can be very confusing. It's like oh I know what that means I know what you're saying but I don't know that way of saying it. Yeah all this comes with more and more practice. Kevin: Yeah exactly in the second part is the most important trying to explain the situation with the customer because it's a technical vocabulary so you need to explain some things from to someone that never uses uh technical vocabulary. That's really interesting. You need me to focus uh in something easy right to say to another person that's really interesting because then you are listening to an american a native speaker and you're speaking back to them and you're using words that they don't know so you know more English in some ways than they do. It's just that technical language. What a unique experience to know more English than a native speaker but having to change it for them to understand.Jonathan: Yeah it's a challenge because every day you need to focus on trying to explain yourself something easy about technical vocabulary so maybe it's easy, maybe sometimes it's uh difficult because you need to guess what the customer needs and sometimes it's hard because the customer is trying to explain something and you need to all right. Did you need uh this? You need this all right. I got it and this is the result.Jack: So uh you so you need to practice um your English and you use uh Shaw English and you listen to the A to Z English Podcast but um at your work do you also speak English to your co-workers, your colleagues. Do you practice even though you can both of you speak Spanish as a first language? Do you ever communicate in English with your colleagues just for practice?Jonathan: Yes a few things we need to uh speak English with another uh co-workers or maybe when you need to target another department, it's always speaking English and we always needs to be focused in speaking English together and it's more easy to end of the day for the end of the day. Yeah so when you go to work you basically switch your mind to English. You just say when I'm at work I'm using English and then when I get home I use Spanish.Jack: Is that right?Jonathan: Yeah but it's funny because for me I try to get involved um always in English environment so when I arrive at home I turn on my tv and find um series on Netflix and in English and or are you going to when i'm going to work i'm going to listen to music or listen to your podcast on my cell phone so I trying to always um thinking English, do something in English.Kevin: Cool! That's awesome! Yeah that's more and more practice. So of all of those things that you do the last question I like to ask people that we talk to is if you could give a tip to other listeners, what one thing do you think would be the most useful to practice English? Or what do you do that you think is the most useful? Jonathan: All right for me um I guess um you need to practice every day. It's not my magical poison you know or something like that but the first thing you need to change your mind, uh you need to start to focus in English uh think in English. Uh do exercise practice speak with friends uh maybe international friends is the best way because you never need to speak in another language, just holding in English because if I have a friend here, I can speak Spanish. But for example, if I got a friend on in Malaysia and another person doesn't know anything about the Spanish so you need to focus almost in English.Jack: That's a nice tip! Kevin: Nice! Well Malaysia is good. We talked to Mei Fong last week, so maybe if you talk to her, then you can practice as well. Yeah but that's a great tip getting your mind around English that's yeah a great thing. Just practice, practice, practice. Jonathan: Yeah a lot of practice and uh one thing, it's helped me a lot, is this shadowing technique.Kevin: Uh shadowing uh yeah watching videos on YouTube and practice is a bit aloud and yeah if you can't practice with a friend, you can still do something alone. Just listen and repeat and listen, repeat it does help. It helps you sound more natural in the language that's really fantastic.Kevin: You sound like you work really hard at your English and we're talking to you here, so it's having good results. Jack: Good job! Absolutely. Yeah thanks a lot Jonathan. We really appreciate it.Kevin: Yeah Jonathan. Thanks for sharing your story with us. It's very cool and now you've got to get some dinner. It's late there. You must be very hungry. Jonathan: Yeah a little bit. Kevin: Nice well thank you for coming and talking to us.Jonathan: Thanks to you guys. I really appreciate it. Jack: It's our pleasure. Kevin: Yyeah have a great evening.Jonathan: Same to you and take care and I hope I'll see you soon again. Kevin: All right thank you.Jack: Thanks Jonathan bye bye. Jonathan: See ya. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-a-to-z-english-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
After decades of restrictions, China's leaders want women to have more children. But will a 'three-child' policy prevent a decline in China's population? Ed Butler speaks to Professor Stein Emil Vollset from the University of Washington School of Medicine about the dramatic population declines expected in many countries including China. China demographics expert Yong Cai explains why the declining birth rate will be difficult to reverse. And author and journalist Mei Fong tells us why the one-child policy of the past will make it even harder for Chinese authorities to promote larger families in the future. (Photo: A nurse holding a baby at an infant care centre in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China; Credit: Getty Images)
As discussed in his new book The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter "Tiff" Roberts will describe how surging income inequality, an unfair social welfare system, and rising social tensions block China's continued economic rise, with implications for companies and countries around the world. He will discuss how China is struggling to leave behind its "Factory to the World" growth model, and include its hundreds of millions of left-behind migrant workers into a more innovative, consumption-driven economy. The conversation will also focus on how these internal challenges could well further complicate the already troubled relationship between China, the United States, and the world. Dexter Roberts is an award-winning writer and speaker who previously spent more than two decades as China bureau chief and Asia news editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, reporting from all of China's provinces and regions, as well as Taiwan, Mongolia and North Korea. He now serves as an adjunct instructor in political science and a Mansfield Fellow at the University of Montana and as a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council's Asia Security Initiative. He has launched a China newsletter called "Trade War"; his book The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: the Worker, the Factory and the Future of the World was published in March 2020. Mei Fong is an award-winning communicator and writer. As a Wall Street Journal China correspondent, she won multiple awards, including a shared Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Her first book, on China's one-child policy, was critically acclaimed and winner of a non-fiction award by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Her efforts led to her being named a Top 50 influencer on U.S.-China relations by Foreign Policy magazine. She has appeared on CNN, CBS and ABC, and her writings have been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. She is a graduate from the National University of Singapore and holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What unique ethical challenges does COVID-19 present to journalists? How might a lack of trust in media and government affect the public's response to the COVID-19 crisis? Mei Fong, director of communications and strategy at The Center for Public Integrity, and Daniel Lippman, "Politico" White House reporter, discuss these issues and much more.
What unique ethical challenges does COVID-19 present to journalists? How might a lack of trust in media and government affect the public's response to the COVID-19 crisis? Mei Fong, director of communications and strategy at The Center for Public Integrity, and Daniel Lippman, "Politico" White House reporter, discuss these issues and much more.
577 Emperors, 4000 years of history and 1.4 billion people is a lot to cover in one episode, but if anyone can, its Steve. At least, thats what he told Richie when he pitched an episode on the worlds second biggest economy Luckily, the boys also asked Mei Fong, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author of One Child, to come and explain the history of Chinas one child policy and its contemporary politics. [www.meifong.org/](http://www.meifong.org/) [Mei Fong on Twitter](https://twitter.com/meifongwriter?lang=en) [Buy Mei's book](http://a.co/6B6MOUE) [Help fund the books distribution in mainland China](https://www.gofundme.com/support-a-book-on-onechild-policy) [Manchu hairstyle Want to be on the show?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_(hairstyle))
Mei Fong is a journalist with more than a decade of reporting in Asia, most recently as China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, which is where she was working when I met her several years ago in Beijing. Her stories on China’s transformative process in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics formed part of the package that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, an honor she shared with her colleagues at the Journal. Her work has also won awards from Amnesty International, New York’s Society of Professional Journalists, and the Society of Publishers in Asia. Mei appears regularly as a China commentator on NPR, CBS, CNN, and PBS. She has taught at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and at Shantou University in China. And she is currently the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a think-tank in Washington, DC. Last year she published her first book, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment. The book recounts the history and after-effects of China’s one-child policy, the country's longest-running and most radical social experiment. Through a combination of in-depth research, on-the-ground reporting, and vivid storytelling that draws on her time as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in China, One Child explores the far-reaching social and economic impact of the policy. In our conversation, Mei explains how she got the idea for the book, how she meticulously conducted the research that went into it, and the process she went through to pitch it to publishers, write it, and edit it. She also shares some inspiring and very practical advice for writers, and she reveals her favorite writing craft book—which happens to be one of my favorites as well! For more information about Mei, and to find a link to her book on Amazon, just head to writewithimpact.com/episode62. You can also learn more about Mei on her website at meifong.org.
On Festival Friday Roger Cohen, Mei Fong, Christina Lamb, and Kerry O'Brien discuss the state of the world to a packed tent with Ben Knight.
A Pulitzer prize-winning author joins us for this episode! Mei Fong tells us all about her book, One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment, and why China is full of horny young men these days. The chat gets a bit serious as we discuss the realities of the One Child policy, and one of us has a little cry. We also talk about Mei's experiences of miscarriage and IVF. But then it's back to the usual old nonsense as Mei tells us about the time she met the queen sporting the world's dodgiest perm, and why suburban America is the strangest place she's ever lived. We finish up with Scummy Mummy Confessions, and Ellie almost throws Mei off the podcast for slagging off Marie Kondo. Mei's brilliant book is out now. You can read more about her at meifong.org, and follow her on Twitter @meifongwriter. We're on Twitter (@scummymummies), Instagram, and Facebook. Please send your confessions to scummymummiespodcast@gmail.com and visit us at ScummyMummies.com. If you like the podcast, do tell your friends! Thank you for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Mei Fong is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covered China for the Wall Street Journal for many years. Her book, "One Child", the story of China's most radical experiment details the repercussions of the one-child policy. Originally implemented to kerb population growth, the one-child policy resulted in immense suffering and hundreds of thousands of infant deaths. By the time the government announced it was ending the policy in 2015, China had a surplus of 33 million men and population numbers that were dropping drastically.
China's one child policy was introduced by the Chinese Government in the post-Mao era in an attempt to curb the country's population growth, which policymakers saw as an impediment to China's economic development. Although the Chinese Government replaced it with a ‘two child policy' in January 2016, the effects of the policy continue to reverberate. Mei Fong, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, former China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and author of the book 'One Child', joins Elena Collinson, researcher at the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney, to discuss the consequences of the policy for China and the rest of the world.
The first day of 2016 marked the official end of China’s one-child policy, one of the most controversial and draconian approaches to population management in human history. The rules have not been abolished but modified, allowing all married Chinese couples to have two children. However, the change may have come too late to address the negative ways the policy has shaped the country’s demographics and the lives of its citizens for decades to come. In this podcast, Jeremy and Kaiser talk with Mei Fong about the policy’s history, its effectiveness and the consequences of nearly four decades of mandating a family’s size. Mei also discusses her heartbreaking encounters with parents who lost their only children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and their subsequent rush to have their vasectomies and sterilizations reversed. She provides insight into the people who designed the policy (rocket scientists — literally, rocket scientists!), those who enforced the rules, what lies ahead with the relaxation in the policy, the 30 million unfortunate bachelors who can’t find a mate, and the fate of grandparents who have only one descendant in a culture that used to regard a large family as the ultimate happiness. For further reading, don’t miss Jeremy Goldkorn’s Q&A with Mei Fong, in which she discusses her early life and career, from developing an interest in journalism after a meeting with Queen Elizabeth to winning a Pulitzer to navigating the white-male dominated ranks of the foreign correspondence field. Our Sinica backgrounder, “The past and future of China’s one-child policy”, provides different perspectives on the controversial subject, some of which highlight the benefits it may have had. Recommendations: Jeremy: China: When the Cats Rule, by Ian Johnson, on the 20th-century Chinese writer Lao She. Mei: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee; Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande;When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Kaiser: The television show BrainDead.
This week's show features more interviews from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. We talk with actor Rainn Wilson, author of a new memoir, The Bassoon King, and with Malaysian Chinese writer Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment. We also talk with LARB Senior Humanities Editor Sarah Mesle about the upcoming season of Game of Thrones. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
On today’s episode, I talk about China's One Child Policy with Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who served as the China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She has a new book called ONE CHILD: THE STORY OF CHINA’S MOST RADICAL EXPERIMENT. We’ll talk about how the One Child policy started as a “quick fix” to China’s overpopulation problem and how it suddenly came to an end 35 years later in October 2015. We’ll talk about the many people who were collateral damage in China’s attempt to socially engineer families including China’s rural poor who suffered forced abortions and sterilization. Finally, we’ll examine the many unintended consequences of the One Child Policy including a rapidly growing elderly population with no one to care for them, a massive gender imbalance and a whole lot of lonely men, and a shrinking workforce that is threatening to undermine the bedrock of the Chinese economy - manufacturing. If you enjoyed today’s episode, order ONE CHILD: THE STORY OF CHINA'S MOST RADICAL EXPERIMENT on Amazon or download the audiobook for free through a special trial offer just for our listeners at www.audibletrial.com/kickasspolitics.com. You can follow Mei Fong at www.meifong.com or on Twitter at @meifongwriter. Please subscribe to KickAss Politics on iTunes and leave us a review. You can also help us reach our fundraising goal for this year and donate at www.gofundme.com/kickasspolitics. Or go to the website for the show at www.kickasspolitics.com and click on the donate button. Thanks for listening!
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Human Rights Press Award, author Mei Fong discusses China’s one child policy, women’s issues and child adoptions in a candid discussion of her recent book, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, with National Committee Senior Director for Education Programs Margot Landman. Despite its implementation at a time of global concern about over-population, China’s one-child policy developed into one of the most controversial social policies of the twentieth century. Between 1970 and 1976, the Chinese government successfully led the “Long, Late, and Few” campaign which aimed to curtail population growth at a time of limited resources. However, by the end of the decade, after a brief decline China’s population growth rate began to rise again, prompting the leaders to reexamine their efforts. In response, in 1980 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China announced the implementation of the so-called one-child policy, in which Han couples would be limited to one child. There were exceptions, particularly for rural families. The contentious population control policy lasted for more than three decades; in late 2015 the Chinese government announced that families would be allowed to have two children. The one-child policy has had tremendous demographic repercussions far beyond a significantly reduced birth rate. Acclaimed author and journalist Mei Fong has spent years documenting and analyzing the impact of the policy. In her book,One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment, Ms. Fong writes about the origins of the policy and some of its unintended consequences including the creation of “little emperors” (spoiled children), a huge gender imbalance, and a rapidly aging population. Mei Fong discussed her book with the National Committee on March 8, 2016 in New York City.
January 2016 marked the end of China’s one child policy—a regime of family planning policies and enforcement that scarred generations of parents and children. On this edition of Making Contact, China correspondent Gady Epstein speaks with Mei Fong, author of One Child:The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, and Barbara Demick, journalist and former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.
January 2016 marked the end of China’s one child policy—a regime of family planning policies and enforcement that scarred generations of parents and children. On this edition of Making Contact, China correspondent Gady Epstein speaks with Mei Fong, author of One Child:The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, and Barbara Demick, journalist and former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.
In collaboration with ChinaFile When Communist Party leaders adopted a one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birth rates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China moves to a nationwide two-child policy, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong's latest book, One Child: The Story's of China's Most Radical Experiment, explores the human impact of the one-child policy and its future implications: will China's "Little Emperor" cohort make for an entitled or risk-averse generation? How will the country manage to support itself when one in every four people is over sixty-five years old? Perhaps most importantly, exactly how much has the one-child policy hindered China's growth?