应逐步废除一胎化政策
来源：美国《时代》周刊
在四川地震的废墟中，一幅接一幅特别可怕的图像冲击着观者，直至观者近乎失去知觉：孩子们被埋在倒塌的学校下面，还有很多孩子成为孤儿。由于我的第一个孩子快要降生了，我发现儿童受难的景象特别令人难过。但另一系列的画面也深深打动了我：那些悲痛的父母，由于中国的一胎化政策，他们失去了唯一的孩子。
邓小平和其他中国领导人开始担忧人口过多会导致永久的贫困，自1979年起，中国民众就只准生育一个孩子。不过富裕的中国人（而不是四川农村地区的居民）有时候会支付巨额的罚款多生孩子，还有一些人会设法避开规定。在地震后，北京表示，独生子女在地震中残亡的家庭获准再生一个孩子。但政策的放宽应该延伸到最近的灾难之外。
和很多外国人一样，我在1999年第一次访问中国时，我对一胎化政策就很反感，而且强制堕胎、女婴因父母希望生男孩而被抛弃、或者国家授权的堕胎等情况加重了反感。如今，作为一个准父亲，我无法想象政府要求我不能有更多的孩子，或者强迫我或妻子放弃一个超生的孩子。随着年龄的增长，我更加庆幸自己有同胞——我的姐姐。
诚然，一胎化政策已经成功实现最初的目的。它让中国的出生率下降近三倍（如今，人口年增长率低于1%，远低于替代生育率），而且国家经济增长翻倍，更多妇女进入劳动市场。然而它也有严重的副作用。中国面临人口噩梦。在十年内，它迅速老化的人口将面临严重的劳动力短缺，而且中国将有大量老人，却没有多少孩子照顾他们，一个狄更斯式的社会体系。遥望东海岸，你开始看到新的穷人——年老体弱的男男女女，在火车站附近捡食物的残渣。
而且中国面临世界上最失衡的性别比例：男女比例为1.2比1。男性过剩，这意味着很多中国男人将无法组成家庭，这是一种恶兆；中国城市里，社会底层的男性青年暴徒已呈增长之势，他们很容易成为犯罪成员。在北京最大的噩梦里，这些愤怒的青年人可以危害国家。学者赫德森（Valerie Hudson）和邓波儿（Andrea den Boer）在2004年的书中记述19世纪中期的性别失衡，男性过多，促使中国农村爆发武装叛乱。
沿着上海和北京的商业街，一胎化政策最有害的影响很快变得明显。在一个个商场里，那些被当作“小皇帝”养大的孩子们穿着最新款的意大利皮鞋，用最新款的韩国手机。纵容一下自己似乎也未尝不可。但一个消费主义的社会，一个大多数城市人没有在成长期间学习照顾兄弟姐妹或放弃自己的需要的社会，将变成一个自私的社会。
逐步废除一胎化政策的时刻已经来临，四川地震和悲痛家庭可以成为催化剂。和其他改革措施（如在深圳发起开放倡议）一样，一胎化政策的废除可以是一个缓慢的、研究的过程，然后推广到全国。显然，出生率上升将给中国社会和医疗基础设施（和铁路和道路等基础设施相比，这方面远远落后）造成巨大的负担。侧重点的改变至关重要。医院将需要注入大量资金和其他资源。老人院、儿童保健以及其他社会服务的薄弱系统将必须大大扩展。
所有这些必须马上开始着手，在中国的人口和性别失衡仍然不算尖锐，在国家有大量储备财富之时开始着手。如果北京对一胎化政策不采取任何措施，其结果可能比四川地震更具灾难性。（原标题：家庭组成；作者：Joshua Kurlantzick）
英文原文地址：http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810166,00.html
英文原文：The Family Way
Thursday, May. 29, 2008 By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
In the rubble of the Sichuan earthquake, one particular horrific image piled upon another, until they nearly numbed a viewer: children buried in their collapsed schools, and many others orphaned. With my own first child due shortly, I found the sight of suffering children particularly trying. But another series of images also deeply affected me: that of grieving parents who, because of China's one-child policy, would have lost their only children.
Since 1979, when Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders began worrying that overpopulation would lead to perpetual poverty, Chinese people have been prevented from having more than one child, though wealthy Chinese — not rural Sichuan dwellers — can sometimes pay large fines to be able to have two children while some find other ways around the restrictions. In the wake of the quake, Beijing says that couples whose only child was killed or disabled will be permitted to have another one. But the relaxation of the policy should extend far beyond the recent disaster.
Like many foreigners, on my first trip to China in 1999 my gut reaction to the one-child mandate was revulsion, aggravated by stories of forced sterilizations, baby girls left abandoned because parents wanted a son for their only child, or state-mandated abortions. Now, as a father-to-be, I cannot imagine a government telling me to have no more kids, or forcing my wife and me to get rid of a new, additional baby. And as I grow older, I take ever greater comfort from having a sibling — my sister.
True, the one-child policy has succeeded in its original aims. It has slashed China's birth rate by nearly three times — today, annual population growth is less than 1%, well below the replacement fertility rate — and has multiplied the country's economic growth and brought more women into the workforce. Yet it has also had severe side effects. China faces a demographic nightmare. Within a decade, its rapidly aging population will suffer a severe labor shortage, and China will have millions of elderly people with few kids, and a Dickensian social system, to care for them. Away from the gleaming east coast, you are starting to see the new poor — aging men and women, often sick or disabled, picking for scraps of food around train stations.
China also faces one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world: men outnumber women 1.2 to 1. The male surplus, which means many Chinese men will never be able to have a family, creates an ominous future; already, an underclass of young male thugs is proliferating in Chinese cities, a group easily recruited for crime. In Beijing's worst nightmare, these angry young men could turn against the state. As scholars Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer wrote in a 2004 book, in the mid-19th century unequal sex ratios, which left men idle, contributed to armed rebellion in the Chinese countryside.
Along the shopping boulevards of Shanghai and Beijing, perhaps the most pernicious impact of the one-child policy soon becomes apparent. In mall after mall, children raised as "Little Emperors" drape themselves in the latest Italian leather shoes and South Korean mobile phones. Pampering yourself might seem benign. But a society consumed by consumerism, and where most urbanites grow up never learning to care for siblings or to give up any of their own needs, will become a selfish society.
The time, then, has come for the one-child policy to be phased out, and the Sichuan quake, and its grieving families, could be the catalyst. As with other transformative measures, like the open-door initiative launched in Shenzhen, the one-child policy's abolition could be handled slowly, studied, then rolled out nationally. Clearly, a rising birth rate would place an enormous burden on China's social and medical infrastructure, which is far less developed than physical infrastructure like roads and rail. A change in emphasis will be essential. Hospitals will need vast new infusions of money and other resources. The weak system of homes for the elderly, child-care providers and other social services will have to be greatly expanded.
All this must begin now, while China's demographic and gender imbalances remain mild, and while the state has a vast reserve of wealth. If Beijing does nothing about the one-child policy, the results could be even more catastrophic than the Sichuan quake.