One Child Nation Review: Directors Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang explore China’s One-Child Policy and the painful, lingering generational consequences on parents and children directly affected by it.
As outsiders, our knowledge of China’s One Child Policy – the extreme population control measure that limited couples to one child only – runs to the superficial: China’s population had reached 1 billion, daughters were unwanted in preference to “little emperors”, there was an upswing in international adoptions from China and propagandist ideology of loyalty to the collective and the party. What we ignored, however, was the depth of shocking human rights violations, the mercilessness in which the party and village chiefs enforced the policy and the lingering, generational consequences on the parents and children directly affected by the policy.
Documentarian and narrator Nanfu Wang is one such woman who grew up under the policy. Having grown up in a village in Jiangxi Province where it was permissible to have a sibling if they were at least five years apart, Wang felt embarrassed when single city children discovered she had a sibling. The propagandist indoctrination was so ingraine into her everyday life that she didn’t think much about it until the premature birth of her own son following her emigration to the U.S. Wondering if her thoughts and experiences under the policy were her own or learned behaviour, Wang decided to return to China to explore the generational effects in more depth; starting with her own family and village acquaintances before spreading out to people (midwives, family planning officials, journalists and artists) on both sides of the enforcement measures.
The first-hand accounts from her family are utterly heartbreaking. Wang’s mother Zaodi, recalls how strict it was back then and how she personally witnessed the destruction of people’s homes when they refused forced sterilisation. When village chiefs ordered her own forced sterilisation after the birth of Nanfu – a name intended for the “man pillar” son they hoped to have – they were thwarted by her grandfather who managed to prevent it. With ultrasound gender tests banned, her mother vividly recalls her own mother telling her that if it was another daughter, she would put it in the bamboo basket she left on the floor and leave her in the market. Whilst Nanfu’s family was lucky enough to have a son, her aunts, uncles, and tens of thousands of other families were not so fortunate.
Related: Living the Light – Robby Müller – Captured at TIFF 18
With endless farmland to toil, and family survival dependent upon the success of their farms, boys are revered over girls due to the value of their utility as labourers as well as a pillar to carry on the family name. Solemnly, and in distressingly agonizing detail, Wang discovers that one uncle abandoned his daughter in the meat market with £15 in the hope someone would want her (she died two days later in the market covered in bites) so that they could try again for a son. Another aunt gave her daughter away to a human trafficker as she felt it better to hope for a better life for her daughter than inevitable death on the street. The horrific stories of aborted near-term babies and abandoned daughters left to die on the side of the road are sadly, a common suffering amongst families.
What is astounding to hear however is that her family doesn’t want Nanfu to be critical of the policy as it was necessary to ensure China’s survival. “There would be cannibalism in China today without it,” Zaodi tells her. The conviction in this ‘belief’ is a little too chilling to hear on repeat, especially when we hear over the din of propaganda the common phrase “I had no choice”.
The weight and consistent bombarding of policy propaganda is overwhelming: billboards, graffiti passages painted onto the side of buildings, storybooks, school texts, operas, songs, folk dances and theatrical performances advocating the value of having only one child as a great thing for the nation’s prosperity. It’s a consistent theme throughout the movie, even at its end when the policy propaganda shifts from one-child to two-children ideology.
One Child Nation is an incredibly powerful film with an insurmountable amount of information to take in but Wang manages to do so spectacularly in the 85-minute runtime. The film maintains a brisk pace as it traverses from familial stories, through interviews with midwives and family planning officials who perpetrated the social experiment to journalists, artists, and organisations who have brought the consequences of these atrocities to light.
You absolutely do not want to miss this stunningly nuanced film about the ripple-effect residuum of party-centric population control over humanity. It’s a tragedy so profound that the truth of it demands to be heard.
One Child Nation was reviewed at the Sydney Film Festival by Sacha Hall, June 2019.
One Child Nation is also screening this weekend at Sheffield Doc Fest.
