One Child: The Past and Future of China’s Most Radical Experiment

　　當中國共產黨領導人在1980年開始執行一胎化政策時，他們希望透過這項政策遏止出生率，幫助底層階級脫離貧窮。但執行這項政策，所付出的代價是什麼？隨著中國宣布結束這項這項執行三十年政策的此時，回頭檢視，一胎化政策為中國帶來了不少後遺症，包括人口老化、性別失衡，甚至造成年輕勞動力不足的嚴重問題。

　　曾因第一手報導奧運帶來的中國社會問題獲得各界肯定，普立茲得獎記者方鳳美（Mei Fong）這次更歷時數年，記錄一胎化政策對中國社會各層面造成的影響。在《One Child》中，方鳳美旅遊中國各地取材，採訪深受此項政策影響的家庭。這些故事揭露了一項事實：一胎化政策，造成獨生子女必須獨力負擔父母、祖父母這些老年人口未來所需，性別失衡更讓各地村莊充滿了找不到老婆的單身漢。

　　這些問題將是中國必須面對的一項苦果：這些一胎化政策下產生的「小皇帝」，未來是否有能力克服他們天生的宿命？面對將來每四人中就有一人超過六十五歲的老齡化社會，中國政府要如何維持它自身的經濟成長不墜？

An intimate investigation of the world s largest experiment in social engineering, revealing how China became what it is today, where it s inevitably headed, and the implications for the rest of the world
China adopted its one-child policy in 1979, exercising unprecedented control over the reproductive habits of more than one billion people. China now seems poised to overtake the United States as the world s largest economy, but this law may be its undoing. The Soviet Union collapsed because of its wrongheaded attempt to engineer the market. What will come of China s attempt to engineer its population?Mei Fong reveals the true human impact of government-mandated family planning, traveling across China to meet the people who live with its consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality: unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only children supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages teeming with ineligible bachelors. This demographic imbalance, Fong argues, will lead to further economic and societal turmoil in the years to come.Fong has spent over a decade documenting the repercussions of the one-child policy on every sector of Chinese society. She offers a nuanced and candid account of government planning gone awry."

作者簡介

　　MEI FONG is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist with over a decade of reporting in Asia, most recently as China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She is a winner of Amnesty’s Human Rights Press Award, a 2013 recipient of a Ford Foundation grant for investigative journalism, and a 2015 New America Fellow. Her writing has also appeared in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Forbes, and Far Eastern Economic Review. She has appeared on CNBC, CNN, National Public Radio, South China Post, and Singapore Straits Times.