One Child Nation

A deeply thought provoking and emotionally confronting look at some the people affected by, or tasked with enforcement of China's one child policy established in 1979. The narrative is mostly driven by the film maker's recollections of her experience, and interviews with her family and others in the area where she grew up.

Excellent film making, use of imagery, narration and examination of a number of different perspectives. Very sensitively approaching the subject, she was able to gently yet persuasively coax some truly shocking admissions of guilt from some of her interviewees. Be prepared for some awful images, but thankfully these scenes are not dwelt on for long as macabre voyeurism was not the intent, but to solidly make the point of what happened to many babies. The story told indicates that the one-child policy was implemented in a harsh, cruel, uncompromising and unforgiving way, although it seems the government eventually recognised the need to protect and find new homes via international adoption programmes for babies that were abandoned by their parents trying to avoid the harsh penalties that they would face.

The only criticism is that there is not much in the way of analysis of the reasons that led up to the point of the introduction of the policy in China. This was hinted at by interviews with her mother, but not much else. For an example of a country that should have, but hasn't introduced population control measures, take a look at India. There, they have well over 100 million people enduring appalling, squalid, miserable poverty and hundreds of millions more struggling daily to eke out a meagre existence. Religious dogma and lack of understanding about environmental impact regarding unrestrained human reproduction are at least partly to blame for the coming crisis of over-population in most parts of the world. If the human race is to avoid large scale wars over food, water and climate change induced migration in the next 30 years, then global population controls need to be carefully introduced and incentivised, but not the way the PRC did it. Seen at NZIFF Wellington by a parent of one child.

I began to love the documentary as an art-form much more when I realised that they're less about presenting basic facts, and more about presenting ideas, personal (and often subjective) stories, and visually depicted arguments/opinions. Therefore, I'd never mark a documentary down for being biased, unless perhaps that bias presented a clearly dangerous or insensitive message to its audience.

I say all this because One Child Nation is not aiming to be an "objective" or strictly factual documentary (very few documentaries do, in my opinion, and I believe that's a common misconception which I should nevertheless shut up about now). In just under 90 minutes, director and host/narrator Nanfu Wang provides a succinct and effective history of China's one child policy, before spending most of the documentary interviewing those who lived under and were affected by it. As a result, the documentary does not have a particularly strong through-line, in my opinion, nor a great sense of pacing, as the feeling of going from one subject to another (occasionally linking them effectively) does result in an episodic feel.

There is also a noticeable way in which some of these segments are more interesting than others- One Child Nation is at its most interesting and heartbreaking when Wang focuses in on her family, asking them why they went along with the one child policy and pulling surprisingly few punches. There is also the horrific stories given by an artist who tried to bring attention to the mistreatment of discarded babies through his disturbing photography and artwork. A whole film could have been given to either of these 'segments,' though in the former's case, I could understand how taxing that would be as a filmmaker to interrogate your own family that much, and with the latter, I could see that being too gruesome an angle to spend an entire feature length documentary on.

The lack of flow, solid but not quite incredible conclusion, and occasional repetition are the only slights I have here, and I know I've spent an unfair amount of this review on them. For the most part, this is a very engaging and oftentimes very sad, even hopeless documentary about an entire nation of people being oppressed and manipulated, even to the point where most of the older generations are shown to still believe the one child policy was a good thing. As the documentary goes out of its way to depict, this was not the case, as the sheer number of stories and statistics regarding children being discarded (particularly if a couple had a girl as their only child, as they were seen as less desirable within the culture, being unable to properly 'pass' the family name on) is enough to convince anyone with half a functioning heart that no, this policy was not a decent or ethical one. There are reasons some thought it sensible, but the human cost can't be ignored here, and this documentary succeeded in making me reflect on that, and wonder why I hadn't really thought about the implications of this now retired policy before, despite knowing full well that it had existed.

Good documentaries often provoke and force you to open your eyes and properly think about issues you may not have known existed, or otherwise did not give the time and thought they might have deserved. One Child Nation, despite an imperfect execution, succeeds on this front, and as such I can easily recommend it to documentary fans who are okay with some upsetting subject material. It was shocking and thought-provoking, without feeling manipulative or exploitative, and was well worth the 90 minute running time.

There are always two side to a policy, however one need to understand the context which resulted in this "one child" policy. China was struggling to feed its people. Its either mass starvation or mass migration. In fact, many had left and these are the Chinese living all across South East Asia. Imagine there was no policy and the people did not leave. How many more millions would have died of starvation. So before anyone condemn this "one child" policy claiming that many unborn children aborted, think of the millions who could have died due to starvation. This story depict the evil of "one child" policy but there is another side of story that is untold.

"As a bookish child, I would come to see the one-child policy as one of the most fascinating and bizarre things about the land of my ancestors, equal parts Aldous Huxley and King Herod." Mei Fong, One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

Hearing about China's 1979 one-child policy, lasting 35 years, is one thing. Listening to Asians who lived through it is another. The logic of administrators, some of whom who appear in Nanfu Wang's informative and touching documentary, One Child Nation, almost make sense.

Then you realize who is abandoned and who abducted, mostly girls, and you grimace for them and the families who were torn apart by the rule. Assuredly the females had to go first when authorities discovered families with more than one child because the Asian tradition had always favored males.

Wang having been given a man's name (Nanfu translates into "man" and pillar") shows a deft hand at directing without preaching. She does what I find lacking in too many docs-the other side. Those supporting a one-child policy appear frequently praising it as the salvation of a billion people who would have starved or resorted to cannibalism without the population restraint.

The devastating effects cannot be hidden: babies left in baskets, twins separated forever, human trafficking on a grand scale are just a few of the disorders. Propaganda is always there to reinforce the state's message. Wang presents it all, both good and bad.

But like our dark slavery past or Nazi cleansing, heinous plans to control population never seem to survive. The trail, however, is bloody and harrowing.

Wang has expertly balanced between a depressing subject and an important history lesson: "Don't fool with Mother Nature."

Greetings again from the darkness. Living in a free society means we get to make many of our own life decisions ... big ones and small. Of course, those decisions are best if managed within generally accepted societal norms. Most of us can't even imagine living under the rule of a government that controls something as personal as the number of kids we can have in our family. Well, in 1979 China imposed a "one child" policy. It stood for more than three decades, until 2015. Filmmakers Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang give us an insider's glimpse of the effects of this policy by talking to the folks who lived through it.

Ms. Wang was born in China and moved to the U.S. Having recently had a baby, she decided to return to her birth country and explore the effects of the policy under which she was born. The social experiment and restrictive policy was instituted out of desperation for a country whose population was booming, yet the economy and food supply were a mess. She shows us the propaganda that was seemingly everywhere - from artwork on neighborhood walls to television shows. The approach was to make people think this was their patriotic duty, and that one child was the idyllic life.

What has never been discussed or studied was the dark side of what the policy meant. It was a system that encouraged boys and downgraded girls. To Ms. Wang's credit, she interviews those on both sides of the policy - those who believe it was necessary and prevented over-population, and those who tell the horror stories of families torn apart, babies abandoned, and the secretive human trafficking that occurred. It's quite devastating to hear these people discuss the personal impact.

The film is autobiographical in nature, in that Ms. Wang is our narrator, often appears on camera, and even interviews her own family members - both to personalize the story and to educate herself. Hearing the story of her grandfather stepping in to prevent sterilization of Nanfu's mother is incredible. We learn she later had a son who became the favored child within the family. And yes, we get details ... very specific details ... on the forced sterilizations and abortions that occurred. One doctor takes credit for 'tens of thousands' of abortions and sterilizations, which Ms. Wang effectively contrasts with America's ever-increasingly restrictive abortion policies. These are the two extremes in preventing women's control of their own bodies.

No top government officials are interviewed, but the implications are quite clear. We even learn of the Utah organization Research-China that researches Asian children adopted during this era, often with the adoptive parents unaware of what was happening in China. We even learn of a set of twins who were separated at birth - one raised in the U.S., the other in China. They have never met. Ms. Wang is quite effective as a documentarian-journalist. Though the film lacks any attempt at style points, the details are astounding. She even shows how the Chinese government transitioned from 'one child' to marketing the benefits of a "two child" household, and how the propaganda machine kicked in. This film is all about impact, and it will deliver a gut-punch.