One Child Nation

I don't like Communist China and many of its policies, including one child policy. I have the same overall view as the documentary. However, to make a more powerful documentary, they should have applied more scientific storytelling method and interviewed people from broader range of background. Moreover, the film should have involved less of her family and relatives to make it more objective.

As a documentary it was very informative with insight from many that went through, enforced, and were victims of the one child policy. The film however did not take a bipartisan informative stance, which would allow viewers to form their own opinions. The filmmaker used a nations tragedy to promote her own ideas. The documentary focused on the tragedy of families having their babies killed, which the filmmaker managed to turn into a statement about how awful it was for Chinese women to not have a choice in the killing of their babies. She went further and said that the decision should be left to the mother. In other words, a dead baby under a bridge (as depicted in the film) is awful if the mother had no choice in the decision, however if it was her choice, a dead baby under a bridge is acceptable.

"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."

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.

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.