The battle of China’s invisible children, victims of the one-child policy, to recover lost years
As many as 13 million Chinese born outside the one-child policy were denied education and health care, have found getting work hard and could not marry. Has the end of the policy come too late for many of these invisible children?
Living in Beijing for 23 years, Li Xue has never attended school, not even for a day. China is supposed to provide a free, nine-year education to every child but Li was not included. For the past 23 years, she has had no access to any form of social welfare. She has not been allowed to get married, find a job, or open a bank account.
For Li was the second child born to her parents and, due to the nation’s one-child policy that ran from about 1978 until 2015 to curtail population growth, she didn’t exist in the Chinese government’s databases.
Li says her parents tried to register her at the police station when she was born but staff there refused and demanded a letter of approval from the local family planning commission.
With no letter approving her birth, Li’s parents were faced with the prospect of paying a hefty fine (for breaking the one-child policy) to register her but could not afford to do so.
Since then it has been a two-decade battle with officials until China scrapped its one-child policy last year and Li finally received an official paper to prove her existence.
Ending the one-child policy has left people like Li scrambling to make up for lost years, resentful as they fear this recognition may have come too late and unsure what the government is going to do to help them make up for those years.