Sure you can make babies - when we say you can!

One of the countless news stories that came along in the wake of the devastating May 12th earthquake in China was the "offering of solace" given to grieving parents in the form of a temporary lift on the "one-child policy", meaning that couples whose only child was maimed or killed as a result of the disaster would be allowed by the government to have another child.

Well, gee, how generous of the Chinese government. They clearly have their citizens' best interests at heart as always - just as they did when they decided to introduce the "one-child policy" in the first place.

This policy was introduced in the 1970's as an attempt to reduce exploding population growth - an idea that has proven to work better in theory than in practice. Despite the fact that the introduction of this policy has prevented an additional 400 million births (acccording to the government...I mean, who else?!), it has also given birth (forgive the pun) to a multitude of disgusting customs, including forced sterilizations and forced abortions (overwhelmingly of girls in favour of male heirs). The result? An extremely unbalanced gender ratio and an increasingly suppressed, and one can imagine, frustrated people.

It is appalling to me that a country as technologically advanced and culturally rich as China can have such an abysmal human rights record. The mere fact that the government has the right by law to regulate the reproductive rights (or lack thereof in this case) of its citizens is dreadful enough but the fact that they then have the audacity to "allow" couples who have lost their child in a horrid natural disaster to have another one. It's sort of like allowing death row inmates to choose what they'd like their last meal to be - it's pretty cold comfort. You'd think we'd have come at least slightly further from the systemic genocide ala Hitler of more than 60 years ago. Instead it seems like that was just yesterday. In fact it seems like the Stone Age was just yesterday and we're all still Cave-people, grunting and beating each other with clubs. And considering China's population is nearing 1.5 billion people, it's clear that the policy originally instituted to curb population growth isn't doing much good anyway.

Another "uplifting" news story ran at the same time as this one about the worldwide outrage of disability groups over an official guide for Chinese volunteers at the upcoming Beijing Olympics on how to "deal" with disabled persons. This guide describes disabled persons as "a special group...with unique personalities and ways of thinking...(who are) isolated, unsocial and introspective...stubborn and controlling...defensive (with) a strong sense of inferiority" and states that they "might have unusual personalities because of disfigurement and disability", among many other grossly stereotypical and condescending pieces of "advice".

The article notes that persons with disabilites, whose population numbers in excess of 80 million in China alone (more than 2.5 times the entire population of Canada, I might add) are regarded with a "curiosity bordering on disdain". Hand-in-hand with the "one-child policy", the Communist party has fostered deep prejudices against persons with disabilities, resulting in marriage bans between disabled and non-disabled persons, abortions of disabled fetuses, physical attacks and forced isolation, all practices that attempt to "weed out" and ostracize "abnormal" or "unhealthy" people.

How admirable of the Chinese government to care enough about its people to do everything they can to keep them safe from such freakish creatures and to save them from the stress of raising multiple children.

These news items ran right around the same time as stories of Tibetan protests and Chinese sneaking earthquake updates through their cell phones; updates that they weren't able to obtain through the government controlled internet and news outlets.

Frankly, in the wake of these news stories, I'm scared for the Chinese people and can't imagine how they live their everyday lives under the shadow of such oppressive and malignant political tyranny. Mostly, though, I'm scared that one of the largest, most powerful nations on our planet is the harbinger of such discriminatory and outrageous political ideas.

The one consolation one could possibly take from the stories I've discussed, and specifically the "one-child policy" is that less new citizens means less future civil servants.