A new eugenics law and reinvigorated population-control program
combine to spell disaster for Chinese Catholics
by P. H. Mullen
In communist China, where independent religious belief has been
banned-often violently-for more than 45 years, it is hard enough
being Roman Catholic. Woe to Vatican loyalists who defy the Communist
Party's one-birth policy, and bring into the world a second or third
child.
Consider the remote Roman Catholic enclaves of Feng Jia Zhuang and
Long Tian Gou, where enforcement of China's family-planning programs
is a brutal combination of religious repression and political
coercion. Since March 1994, authorities have laid siege to these two
tiny villages, located in the Hebei Province 180 miles southwest of
Beijing, in a sustained attempt to force the 2,000 inhabitants to
follow China's official birth- control policy. In this area of the
country Roman Catholicism is at its strongest, and it is not unusual
for couples-especially farmers-to have three to five children.
Using their chilling slogan, "It is better to have more graves than
more than one child," local authorities repeatedly raid Catholic
homes, confiscate the families' property, and indiscriminately beat
those unable to escape into surrounding fields. Forced abortions have
been performed on women in their last weeks of pregnancy, and several
women who were not pregnant have been sterilized against their will.
Following national law to an extreme, the provincial authorities levy
against couples with more than one child outrageous fines that far
exceed the average farmer's annual income, then beat those unable to
pay.
In one case, a villager had his legs so badly broken by police that
he nearly died, and when three family members inquired about his
condition, they were arrested, abused, and fined the equivalent of
several months' pay. Another man reportedly tried unsuccessfully to
sell his two children on Beijing's black market, in a desperate
effort to free his abused wife from jail.
The methods of torture reportedly in use include hanging men and
women upside down, squeezing them under a chair, exposing them to
extreme weather conditions for extended periods, and burning their
tongues with electric batons to prevent them from invoking God's
help. In the last year, a popular tribunal has been set up to try
those accused of violating the birth policy, and a prison built to
hold the guilty. Exact numbers of those detained by police are
unavailable but reportedly all of the people who have been arrested
have been physically injured in the process.
China's government insists its family-planning program, which has now
been in force for 16 years, relies on education and suggestion. But
in rural areas like Hebei, where poor farming couples often have
large families to assist with the work and to provide old-age
security, authorities have autonomy to do whatever might be necessary
to lower the birth rate.
In Beijing, officials who run the state-controlled Catholic Patriotic
Association, the organization that in direct defiance to the Vatican
claims to represent Catholic interests in China, have consistently
refused to comment on the villagers' plight. Thus far, their only
word on the siege has been a single callous pronouncement: "Catholics
should follow the policies of the government."
A turn for the worse
Bad as it already is, the population program in China is about to get
worse. In October 1994 the government adopted "The Law of the
People's Republic of China on Maternal and Infant Health Care," an
Orwellian decree that says unborn children will be aborted when a
"serious hereditary disease," as defined by the state, exists. The
law, which goes into effect in June 1995, also allows the government
to force newly married couples to be sterilized or to take
long-lasting contraceptives if one or both is "diagnosed to have a
serious hereditary disease, which is medically unsuitable for
reproduction." The same rule applies to "legal contagious diseases,"
and "relevant mental disorders."
The law, which has been described by China's state-operated press as
a formal eugenics practice, covers all diseases or illnesses causing
"total or partial loss of the ability to live independently." For
example, couples discovered to have a genetic predisposition toward
conditions like diabetes, mild retardation, or even rheumatoid
arthritis, which typically manifests itself only after a person's
third decade, could be forced by the government's medical
establishment to abort their child.
On the same day in mid-February when China's population officially
reached 1.2 billion-five years earlier than originally estimated-the
government announced that its one-birth policy was not matching Party
expectations.
China's annual population growth rate fell from 2.8 percent in 1965
to 1.1 percent in 1994, but an annual "surplus" of 13 million births
had Party officials vowing to redouble their efforts. They announced
a new goal: to cut the growth rate to 1 percent and to cap the
population at 1.3 billion until the year 2000. In the long term,
officials hope to reach zero population growth by the year 2040.
Officials hope to encourage lower birth rates by promising
impoverished couples "special treatment in supplying fine seeds,
information, technical training, and funds so as to raise their
incomes to a level higher than the local average," according to the
official New China News Agency. At the same time, local
family-planning directors and police agents who successfully lower
their regional birth rate are to be recognized for their
achievements. As the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law states,
"Organizations and individuals with outstanding performance in the
work of maternal and infant health care...should be rewarded." The
results of offering such incentives can already be seen in the siege
of Fen Jia Zhuang and Long Elan Gou. According to information
smuggled out through Hong Kong by an Italian missionary order, the
longer authorities persecute the villagers, the more financial
rewards the local bosses receive from their superiors.
The government officially discourages efforts to identify the sex of
an unborn child by ultrasound examination, but the new law provides a
gaping loophole, allowing the procedure when "it is necessary on
medical grounds." By 1990 there were more than 100,000 ultrasound
machines in China, and even rural farmers with no schooling know a
device exists which can determine the sex of the fetus. The spread of
this knowledge has corresponded with the appearance of a
disproportionate birth ratio: at least 114 boys are born in China for
every 100 girls. (Typically, the world's natural birth ratio is
105:100.) The disparity suggests that females, who have traditionally
been considered less valuable than males, are aborted so that a
couple does not "waste" its one-birth allowance.
Similarly, the government claims to discourage forced sterilization
and abortions, but concedes unauthorized procedures may occur at the
hands of local officials, who have been given jurisdiction to use
their discretion when enforcing population policy. Beijing contends
that instances of forced procedures are rare, but several reports
suggest otherwise. For instance, the <Human Rights Law Review>
documents instances of women being taken from bed late at night and
brought to 24-hour sterilization clinics, newborns being killed while
still partly in the womb, and IUDs being inserted without a woman's
knowledge immediately after she gives birth. Rather than holding
accountable the local officials who violate women's rights, the
government promotes them.
The Patriotic Association offers no respite from the government's
relentless birth policies. When Catholic belief in the sanctity of
life collides with the government's aggressive push for a reduced
birth rate, there is no debate. Government policy wins, hands down.
Increased harassment
Roman Catholics in China suffer intensely from multiple forms of
repression, and the government's stepped-up campaign will only make
matters worse for both clergy and laity. The government has stated
its first targets will be rural farming areas, which include the
resistant pockets where most Roman Catholics and other Christian
minorities live. The Puebla Institute has documented the cases of 170
Chinese Christian clergy and lay leaders, including 21 Roman Catholic
bishops, who are currently imprisoned, detained, or under constant
harassment and surveillance. Among them is Father Joseph Jin Dechen,
vicar general of the Nanyang diocese in Henan Province. The ailing
71-year-old priest was arrested in 1981 and subsequently sentenced to
15 years in prison. He was paroled in 1992, but since the day of his
release he has been confined to his home village. His associations
are severely restricted and his moves are closely monitored. Father
Jin's one and only crime? He believed abortion wrong, and refused to
tell Roman Catholics otherwise.
There is one final, cruel twist. In September, just three months
after the new birth- control law goes into effect, Beijing will host
the UN World Conference on Women-the most significant UN gathering
since last year's Cairo population conference. The irony surrounding
this much-anticipated event is enormous. At the same time that
thousands of international human-rights advocates are declaiming on
the rights of women, China's own female population will be under
attack from the birth-control police and the surgeons' knives.
Conference delegates, committed to improving the status of women
worldwide, would do well to start with China.
P.H. Mullen is a Washington, DC correspondent for the National
Catholic Register.
This article appeared in the April 1995 issue of "The Catholic World
Report," P.O. Box 6718, Syracuse, NY 13217-7912, 800-825-0061.
Published monthly except bimonthly August/September at $39.95 per
year.
