CHINA Chinas Lost Parents Lobby for Support

(The Wall Street Journal) BEIJINGThe abolition of Chinas one-child policy came too late for one group of
middle-aged Chinese: those whose only child has died and whose financial security in old age is now in
jeopardy.
Wearing white hats that said Parents of the Lost Only Children, hundreds of them protested outside the
national family-planning office in Beijing on Monday, April 18, 2016.
They gathered from various parts of China to lobby for financial support. Many held pictures of their children
and wore signs saying that they were the victims of Chinas family-planning policies.
Jie Dongsheng and his wife, Li Xurong, both 52 years old, had traveled from the city of Zibo in Shandong
province. They lost their 26-year-old son to leukemia in 2013 and have been unable to work due to poor health
and injuries. He was our life. Now we have nothing, said a tearful Mr. Jie.

Amid falling birthrates and a rapidly aging workforce, China said late last year it would allow all couples to
have two children, ending one of modern Chinas most controversial decrees, the One Child Policy, which
prohibited couples from having more than one child.
When implemented in 1980 to help lift China out of poverty, the one-child policy forced a dramatic shift in a
largely agrarian society in which citizens relied on offspring to work on their farms and support them in old
age. Many women who tried for a second child were forced to have abortions.
Chinese law requires adult children to provide for their parents, though it says the elderly are also entitled to
assistance from the state. There is no mention of support for those who have no children or whose children are
unable to support them.
The National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a statement that a monthly subsidy for families
whose only child is disabled or has died would increase to 340 yuan ($52) from 270 yuan. It wasnt clear what
families must do to receive the subsidy; several parents at the protest said they didnt receive any government
funding.
The central government is also planning to increase the retirement age, now at 60 for men and 55 for women, to
address the shrinking ratio of workers to retirees and decrease the reliance on filial support.

CHINA Chinas Lost Parents Lobby for Support

Those who have lost their one child according to estimates, around one million parents say they should be
entitled to compensation since they find themselves childless partly as a result of government policies.
The parent protesters say the government has allowed them to hold events around China, but that there has been
a strong police presence at protests.
Mondays demonstration was no exception. Hundreds of policeboth plainclothes and uniformedsurrounded
the blocks around the National Health and Family Planning Commission building, though they didnt take a
heavy hand with the protesters, who mostly sat crouched quietly on blankets or little stools. Some of them said
there had been scuffles at other protests.

Questions:

Rousseaus Social contract, says people give up freedoms for security. Since Chinese parents were forced to
give up their freedom of having multiple children, should the government provide them with security if their
only child dies? Explain.

What do you suggest should happen as these people age?

Why do you think China is keeping so many police around these events?

Which Eleightnment thinker most resembles China? Locke, Voltaire, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, or
Wollstonecraft? Explain your answer.