“Faced with a population that is shrinking and ageing, Chinese policymakers are attempting to engineer a baby boom after more than three decades of a Malthusian family planning regime better-known as the one-child policy. Central policy planners have loosened restrictions on family sizes, and now all married couples can have two children. There is talk of the limits being dropped altogether, and amid aggressive propaganda drives, local officials are experimenting with subsidies and incentives for parents.” But these efforts appear to be too little too late. Birthrates have fallen and are likely to continue to drop as parents like Xu decide against having more children. More young women are pushing back against state propaganda and family pressure, while improving education standards and income levels have delayed marriage and childbirth. Moreover, decades of the one-child policy have made single-child households the norm, experts say. “China should have stopped the policy 28 years ago. Now it’s too late,” says Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a longtime critic of the family planning policies.” (Kuo & Wang, 2019).
- Read: Kuo, Lily & Wang, Xueying. (2019). Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy? The Guardian, March 2, 2019.
Like Sacred Machines’ song Lonely Child, Sydney Blue explores the poignancy of a child abandoned by his/her biological parents. In this case, the child’s separation from birth-parents is due to China’s decades-long “one child policy,” a law which separated millions of children–those whom the parents brought to full-term–from their parents, in a heartbreaking era of anxiety and trauma.
SYDNEY BLUE
(Carruthers/RE-VO) (2018)
Gray day, Hunan province
A quarter past five
Humans on the platform
Waiting to come alive
A gray old man
Sits down for a smoke
He catches your eye
He looks for your folks
Sydney Blue
How could your parents forget about you?
No future for a girl
You live in a man’s world too
Sunrise in the East
Sets in the West
Funny how the clock bends
When it’s time to do your best
The gray old man
Sits down for a smoke
You cry to stay alive
He looks for your folks
Sydney Blue
A shadow on the wall
No future for a girl
No future at all
I hope some day
they will see
there’s no difference
between you and me
Sydney Blue
How could your parents forget about you?
No future for a girl
You live in a man’s world too
