Briefing Paper

Beginning | Global Population Crisis? | The Chinese Programme | Population Meltdown | Assault Upon Human Rights | Official Chinese Comments | Eugenics | Foreign Support for the Chinese Programme | Official UK Government Statements | Hiding Coercion Behind the ICPD | The ICPD (Cairo Programme) | Appeal Form

"They (Britain's Department for International Development) know only too well what is going on in Tibet and China and are fully aware of the excesses of the Chinese programme…This place is awash with taxpayer's money, some of which goes to organisations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, both of whom are active in China. To pull out would antagonise the Chinese, and the Powers That Be in the UK do not want that, since it might jeopardise trade prospects. The delegation who visited China were told what to say and to see, and the report is a whitewash."
Comments from an employee of the Department for International Development (Tibetan Review, August 1997)

There is no reproductive freedom in Communist China and women are denied choice or control over their own bodies, the state retains control; a major reason why forced sterilisations and forced abortions are the party's choice in preference to contraception-the people after all are not to be trusted! Neither, unsupported claims to the contrary, are Non Governmental Organisations tolerated in China, that would be a contradiction in terms. In addition due to the totalitarian nature of Communist China any commitments it makes to international agreements on population or human rights are empty gestures which it blatantly violates.

Yet, despite these facts the FCO and DFID asks the public to accept that Communist China is committed to reproductive and human rights and that official Chinese organisations, such as the China Family Planning Association, are acting as a human rights watchdog and challenging violations associated with the population programme. However, these claims lack any independent or detailed evidence and at best can be said to be utterly disingenuous. Meanwhile, a wealth of detailed reports and testimony continues to emerge from Tibet and China which documents the existence of widespread violations. Some of these have been marshalled in Orders of the State and surfaced in media reports in this country and overseas, yet such facts has not deterred the DFID from continuing to offer the Chinese programme, moral, political, and financial support, through its funding of bodies such as IPPF, UNFPA, and Marie Stopes International, all of whom work closely within China.

Having witnessed its previous arguments reduced to ashes by the facts the FCO and DFID can only claim, again without a shred of supportive evidence, that the involvement of these multi-lateral population agencies exerts a moderating influence upon the Chinese programme.

Douglas Alexander MP, Secretary of State for the UK's Department of International Development

In an effort to bolster this claim the DFID gave prominence to an experimental birth-control project that took place (1998-2000) within limited areas of China. Agreed and managed by the Chinese Government (Ministry of Health and State Family Planning Commission) Marie Stopes International, and the United Nations Fund for Population. The formal agreement claims the project operated without coercion or birth-target quotas and featured in the replies of former Minister Clare Short to human rights concerns raised during her appearance before the Select Committee on International Development (15th December 1999). She failed to inform the committee of a number of important points surrounding this project.

• According to the US State Department’s 2000 Human Rights Report success in implementing this project has been "mixed", while other counties have made "relatively little" progress; some counties have not, it reports, eliminated the strict birth-quotas or even begun to!
• Both the UNFPA and Marie Stopes International have spent years pretending not to see any sign of coercion and still peddle Chinese claims that the programme is voluntary and conforms to the terms of the ICPD (witness their testimony given to the Select Committee on International Development in 1999)
• It is these organisations along with the Chinese Family Planning Association who will be responsible for monitoring coercion within the project which is rather like entrusting the care of a canary to a consortium of cats!
• The involvement of the Chinese Family Planning Association is not an encouraging sign and does to little to reassure that coercion will not feature. This body, though claiming NGO status, is a government funded group which is actively involved in monitoring the performance of local birth-control officials and reports back to the higher authorities who can increase pressure on local cadres and people as necessary.
• The project document also refers to a mid-term evaluation, which should have been carried out by now yet there is no mention of it and the UNFPA seem reluctant to disclose its findings. One wonders why?

A scare-story from the 1960s now increasingly viewed as an invalid concept and seriously flawed due to its reliance upon the 18th Century Malthusian theory of a growing population exceeding available resources and the notion of an optimum population balance between these two factors. Became a fashionable cause in the 1960s following Paul Erlich's book The Population Bomb in which he introduced the doomsday scenario that unless action was taken to redress a growing world population serious global consequences would follow; his claims are now widely regarded as being too alarmist and grossly misjudged.

However, during the 1970s academics, demographers, environmentalists and governments embraced the concept and adopted measures to reduce population levels. It became a received wisdom and gained wide acceptance as 'fact' generating an entire social industry based upon the belief that population growth has a simple and adverse impact upon development and human welfare. Yet there is no empirical evidence of this relationship and those who still subscribe to the crisis theory seem to have abandoned critical academic rigour and objectivity, believing only what they choose to. After all they have a vested interest, why let the facts get in the way of career prospects?

Ironically during the 1960s Mao Zedong regarded calls for population control with some contempt and viewed it as another form of western interference in China's affairs. That was to change and in 1979 the Chinese leadership, conscious of growing international acceptance of the theory of 'overpopulation', adopted measures to reduce their own population, which accounted for a fifth of the world's total. The fervent sense of urgency and catastrophe envisioned by demographers and the United Nations were viewed by China as requiring immediate and severe action. National targets on population growth and fertility rates were set, the result was the infamous One Child Policy, which was to have such a devastating and terrible impact upon women across the Communist Chinese Empire.

This programme relies upon a series of coercive measures designed to ensure that national and local population targets are met, for women it means a brutal denial of freedom of choice through a range of human rights violations. The nature and magnitude of medical atrocities inflicted is staggering and reminiscent of the systematic abuse endured by Jewish and Gypsy women under Nazi domination. Using internal Chinese sources Dr. John Aird, former China consultant at the US Bureau of the Census, has calculated that between 1971 and 1985 alone there were some 100 million 'birth-control surgeries' involving forced sterilisation and/or forced abortion. Communist China aimed to goal reduce its population to 1.2 billion by the year 2000

This draconian programme was justified by the following:

• China claimed that population growth would endanger food supplies, employment, availability of services, and restrict economic development.
• China insisted the policy was the only one suitable given the circumstances.
• More recently China has suggested population growth could result in environmental concerns.
• These fallacious claims are exposed by the following:
• The Total Fertility Rate for China in 1979 was already going down naturally!
• As a result of improvements in agricultural practice China was not experiencing a food shortage, in fact the opposite! The last great famine in China in which some 30 million died (1950-1961) had resulted not from population growth but the crazed economics of Mao's Great Leap Forwards!
• During the 1990s when China was screaming that population growth was threatening economic development Beijing was also expressing real fears about its economy which was overheating and growing at over 13 percent a year! The two worries are contradictory!

China's population is ageing at a worrying rate with all the implications that holds for provision of services such as community care, hospitals, and medical staff. An alarming increase in the sex-ratio at birth has resulted (normally this is measured at 105/107 male per 100 female births). China's 1982 Census shows the rate to be 108.47, which means some 230, 000-baby girls appear missing! This could produce a dangerous shortage of women for a future generation. An official Chinese journal has predicted an "army of bachelors some 70 million strong. ". A communist Chinese report issued in 2001 stated that as a result of the population policies the population level was 330 million below the official prediction. How many of these births were desired by parents but annihilated on government oders?

According to a 1992 survey the Total Fertility Rate in China has already dropped to below the replacement level by 1991, a target they were expecting to reach by 2000. Data drawn from Chinese sources has shown the TFR has dropped to 1.65 children per woman (replacement level is usually agreed to be about 2.1).

China's coercive population programme requires all citizens to perform family planning as a duty under its totalitarian constitution:

Women with one child to have intrauterine devices inserted/removed by force

Couples with two or more children to be sterilised

Sterilisation of people deemed by the state to have a mental disability

Couples to register for official permission for an authorised birth

Women who are pregnant without state permission to undergo abortions

Detention, mental/physical abuse, financial penalties for failure to comply

"Out-of-plan births and out-of-wedlock births are prohibited" (Article Two, Tianjin Municipality Birth Control Regulations 2001)

"It is necessary to forcibly sterilise those couples who have failed to be sterilised or use contraceptives." (Politics and Law Tribune, pp 89-93, Beijing April 1993)

"In order to reduce the population, use whatever means you must, but do it!" (Comments of Deng Xiaoping reported in China Spring Digest. New York, 1987)

"Only coercive measures can be effective in alleviating the problems caused by [the] population explosion…" (Chinese Agricultural Official reported in Economic Daily, Beijing, 24th January 1989).

"It is a firm policy of the Chinese Government to prohibit any kind of coercive action in implementing family planning" (comments reported by Peng Peiyun, Minister of China's State Family Planning Commission on the eve of her departure for the ICDP Cairo, Xinhua news-report August 1994)

"The current family planning policy…is actually a combination of government guidance and the VOLUNTARY participation of the masses" (Family Planning in China, reported by Xinhua 23rd August 1995)

"We let families become conscious of their own interests and that of the nation, and let them make wise choices according to their own will" (comments by Minister Peng Peiyun, Beijing Review, May 1995)

Apart from wide ranging abuses resulting from the programme there is a more sinister element which is based upon the notion of "improving the quality of the population". Not since atrocities associated with Hitler's master-race theory has a state invested so much importance into the concept of racial purity and selective breeding. Those deemed by the state to be disabled, mentally retarded or having any other mental condition are subject to eugenic regulations including prohibition from marriage, forced sterilisation and medical examinations. At the centre of this Nazi-like programme lies a belief in the superiority of the Han Chinese over subject people such as Tibetans and those from East Turkestan. Indeed, it is highly significant that China's contribution towards the international G-nome programme is to reportedly research genes which could be shown to be purely Chinese.

"Couples who have suffered from serious hereditary diseases, including mental disease, hereditary mental incapability, hereditary deformity, and so on are strictly prohibited from having children" (Article 22 of the 1990 birth-control regulations for Henan Province)

"In those areas of quality the population of minority nationalities (sic) has fallen back into a state of stagnation, is quite backward and the quality is stagnant."
"People of minority populations are more likely to be 'mentally retarded, short of stature, dwarfs or insane'." (Deng Bihai, China Population News, Beijing 22nd December 1989)

"Mentally retarded people will give birth to idiotic children" (Former Chinese Premier, Li Peng, China News Service, April 1990)

"The general rule is that idiots can't marry unless they are sterilised" (Chinese government official reported in New York Times, 15th August 1991)

"Raise the level of eugenics to a new height" (Song Ping, President China Family Planning Association, Xinhua news-report, 20th November 1992)

Peng Peiyun called for "forceful measures…to provide for better births and…improve the quality of the nation" (Xinhua news-report 20th November 1994)

Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care adopted 27th October 1994 contains regulations preventing marriage of those with serious hereditary diseases unless sterilised.

260 000 residents of Gansu province were sterilised because they were deemed to be "mentally retarded" by the authorities. (Steven Mufson, Washington Post 22nd December 1993)

This has largely derived from demographers and governments who fund family planning organisations such as the UNFPA and IPPF; these bodies became involved in 1979 and 1983 respectively, at the height of coercive practices. Throughout they have been extremely reluctant to criticise the Chinese programme and despite being aware of the nature and extent of abuses have remained virtually silent. Prior to the early 1990s UNFPA rejected any suggestion that there was coercion at all.

"China, having adopted practical measures in accordance with her current situation, has scored remarkable achievements in population control" (Thoraya Obaid, New Executive Director of UNFPA, October 2001)

"There is no such thing as, you know, a license to have a birth and so on" (Dr Nafis Sadik Former Director of UNFPA, CBS Television, 21st November 1989)

US Charges of coercion within the Chinese programme were "groundless" (UNFPA Deputy in Beijing, Xinhua news-report, 14th April 1989)

"China's family planning programme is the most successful such effort in the world" (UNFPA Deputy in Beijing, Xinhua news-report, 12th September 1990)

"China has every reason to feel proud of and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its family planning policy and control of its population growth" (Dr Nafis Sadik, Former Director of UNFPA, Xinhua news-report, 11th April 1991)

"The issue of coercion is exaggerated" (comments made by UNFPA Deputy, AFP news-report, 9th June 1991)

This policy of evasion and denial ended in 1993 with the rise of international media coverage of abuses resulting from the Chinese programme. At the same time the UNFPA was forced by the Chinese to abandon an experiment in un-coerced family planning within a limited area within China. Yet UNFPA still accepts and passes on the Chinese Governments propaganda that the programme is voluntary and coercion is not tolerated by the Chinese authorities. To justify such claims UNFPA, IPPF and others within the family planning movement insist that the vague terms of the ICPD at Cairo, which China signed, somehow guarantee that coercive practices are not taking place since China ratified the agreement. However, there is another convenient factor which protects UNFPA from openly tackling the issue of coercion; namely its insistence that national sovereignty is a guiding and pre-eminent principle: "Judgements about what constitutes free and informed choice must be made within the context of a particular culture and the context of the overall government programme for social and economic development." (Dr Nafis Sadik, Former Director of UNFPA, Populi, Vol.13 1986)

By this mechanism UNFPA and IPPF are able to absolve themselves of any ethical responsibility for supporting China's coercive population control programme. Both these organisations claim to support human rights and reproductive freedom yet what good are ethical principles when you are working within a programme that is characterised by gross human rights violations? Meanwhile its continuing presence fails to moderate the horrific excesses of the programme.

"Recent information provided by the Government of China indicates that the UNFPA programme is having a significant impact upon reducing maternal mortality and the number of abortions and sterilisations in their programme counties" (Rt Hon Clare Short MP, former Minister at the UK Department for International Development (Correspondence to Peter Bottomley MP, 20th November 2001)

"Our aim is to give Chinese people access to contraception so that they can choose for themselves how many children they want" (George Foulkes MP, former Under Secretary of State, DFID, Evening Standard 25th October 1999)

"We have never denied that coercion may occur in the implementation of China's family planning programmes" (John V Stuppel, DFID correspondence to Optimus, 13th July 1995).

"My view, as you know, is that women must be able to make birth control choices for themselves, IPPF and UNPFA can help in this process, as well as monitor the worst excesses of the Chinese regime and expose it to international condemnation" (Clare Short MP, as then Shadow Minister for Overseas Development, correspondence to ITN 16th December 1996)

"We would only contemplate withdrawal of support for UNFPA and IPPF activities in China if it became clear that neither organisation was making any progress in changing China's population policy and its implementation" (John V Stuppel, ODA correspondence to CFT 11th January 1995)

"Should it become clear that no progress is being made, the British Government would need to reconsider its support to UNFPA and IPPF work in China" (CP Greenwood, FCO, (correspondence to Martin Moss 30th September 1993))

"The UK strongly backs the principle...that coercion has no place in family planning programmes and that all couples should be able to plan their families on the basis of free and informed choice" (ODA correspondence to Andrew Noble, 26th March 1996)

"Critics of the position argue that several years of UNFPA and IPPF involvement in China has not yet led the Chinese to moderate their policies or stop abuses in the implementation of policy. This is true" (ODA paper 'China: Population Issues', correspondence to Andrew Noble, 26th March 1996)

"In 1995/96 UK financial year the United Kingdom-through the ODA-is providing some £39.5 million to China in the form of concessionary financing arrangements (CFAs) and technical co-operation (TC)"
"UNFPA received £8.5 million in 1994, and IPPF £7.5 million" [donations from UK Government-DFID in 1994, this figure has since risen] (ODA correspondence to Andrew Noble, 26th March 1996)

The Government (Communist China) continued to implement comprehensive and often intrusive family planning polices (U.S. State Department Human Rights Report, 2000).

The State Department Report notes "documented instances" where: "Family planning officials have used coercion, including forced abortion and sterilisation, to meet government goals."

Documentary investigations carried out in Communist China and presented to the US Senate on 17th October 2001 featured harrowing evidence of medical atrocities. This included interviews with women who had been forcibly sterilised within half a mile of a UNFPA office, which claimed coercion was not happening in that region! "A statement by Dr Harry Wu revealed that the Tianjin Central Women's Hospitial, which is reported to be funded by the United Nations Children Foundation, performs 300 forced abortions and 100-150 sterilisations 'surgeries' a month " (Testimony of Dr Harry Wu, US Senate Relations Committee on International Relations, 17th October 2001).

In 1998 a former Fuijian province family planning officer reported that local authorities "systematically used coercive measures such as forced abortion and sterilisation, detention and the destruction of property to enforce birth quotas" (US State Department Report 2000).

The Report further notes "instances in which pregnant prisoners in reeducation-through labor (sic) camps were forced to submit to abortions".

A 1999 report by Amnesty International (AI) records coercion within the programme in Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang Province). According to information received by AI during 1993 "family planning trials and birth control experiments" were established in two areas which resulted in violent local resistance. Experiments are reported to include the introduction of birth-control "contracts" and "plans" which seemed to include campaigns of forced abortions and presumably forced sterilisations. Over 100 women in Toksu County were subject to forced abortions, including some who, it is said, were nine months pregnant and given caesarean operations. In Chkyayuzi County 'birth control ‘surgery' was carried out with little attention to hygiene resulting in illness and death for some women (AI Index ASA 17/18/99).

In Tianjin Women's Hospital a 25 year-old woman (NAME WITHELD FOR CONFIDENTIALITY) was forcibly aborted. Her case history reads:""13/5/1997, 10.30 am, patient (sic) emptied bladder. Induced delivery. Needle inserted two fingers beneath navel. Needle extracted. Clear amniotic fluid. 100ml of Rufenol injected. 14/5/1997, 7.00 am, Irregular lump dropped out. 15/5/1997 At six AM this morning, dead infant delivered. Good contraction. Placenta dropped out..."(Testimony of Dr Harry Wu, US Senate 17th October 2001).

In 1982 under instructions from the Chinese Party surgical teams spread our across China enforcing sterilisations, abortions and insertion of IUDs. The following year nearly 21 million sterilisations were performed, 18 million IUDs inserted and 14 million abortions carried out.