Social Stability – Page 22

Transitioning from Forced Abortions to Forced Births?

As China’s population crisis worsens, the Communist regime announced that it will intervene in the area of abortions among unmarried people.

The China Family Planning Association under the Chinese Communist Party of China released a directive titled, “China Family Planning Association’s Priorities for 2022.” It requires the development of special actions for abortion intervention among unmarried people to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions among adolescents. In the past, the family planning agency enforced the one-child policy by forcing abortions.

According to media reports, the number of China’s annual abortions has hovered around 9.5 million over the past five years. This number came from an article published in 2021 in the Chinese Journal of Practical Gynecology and Obstetrics.

Separately, the Institute of Science and Technology under China’s National Health Commission conducted a survey in 2021 of 39,820 women who had abortions. Women under 25 who had abortions accounted for 47.5 percent. Other studies have shown that women under 20 who have abortions are becoming a significant portion of those women who have abortions.

This comes as China is facing a demographic crisis after its birthrate has fallen for the fifth consecutive year. Fewer babies were born in 2021 than during the Great Famine between 1959 and 1961. Beijing has directed governments at all levels to find ways to stop the population problem from worsening. The priorities issued by the China Family Planning Association have sparked concerns that women may be forced to give birth. It is estimated that there were 400 to 600 million abortions during the one-child policy between 1980 and 2015.

Sources:
1.) The China Family Planning Association, January 28, 2022
https://www.chinafpa.org.cn/tzgg/202201/t20220128_45623.html

2.)The Paper, February 9, 2022
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_16629651

Briefings | | February 15, 2022 | Government/Politics Social Stability

Facing the Real World: China’s Law Professor Was Censored

Within less than two hours of posting, China’s social media WeChat removed a 6000-word post by Lao Dongyan, a law professor at “China’s MIT,” Qinghua University. The title of the posting was, “Facing the Real World.” In 2016, Lao was awarded as The Most Influential Young Scholar in China in the area of the Humanities and Social Sciences. In the posting, Lao reviewed 2021 and looked forward to 2022. She did not mention the CCP leaders.

What did she say that led to the ban?

Lao stated, “In a society full of ‘positive energy’ discourse, the sense of uneasiness spreads like a tidal wave throughout society. The pursuit of freedom is often the subject of ridicule. People are increasingly indifferent to, or they even welcome, the increasing concentration of power and the stepping up of various kinds of control in the name of security, and the tightened rule over society using the technology of big data tracking.”

She continued, “Nearly all the catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by institutional evil. The darkness of human nature compounded by an evil system has repeatedly led to unimaginable tragedies.” “Be prepared to be interviewed if you publish a diary documenting your daily life under the epidemic. If you show solidarity with a colleague who was expelled for his classroom speech, you may even face the experience of ‘being mentally ill.’”

Lao wrote that her “original intention to promote the rule of law in China has turned out to be pure wishful thinking.” She noted that today the theoretical vision of the rule of law and the actual practice of the rule of law are increasingly running in opposite directions. “What is even more absurd about this is that many of those who have been put in chains are not only not angry about losing their freedoms but they are actually quite comfortable with it. They are like frogs being boiled in increasingly warm water.” “It can be said that many people, including myself, choose just to bear it and retreat, thereby enabling evil people to continue to do evil with impunity. In a sense, we are responsible by our passive inaction and for the deterioration of our environment since we choose to tolerate it and even beat a retreat in the face of it.”

Finally, facing the real world, Lao concluded with a quote from J.K. Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard University. “If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself being in the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.’ In my opinion, this is the real ‘positive energy.’ May you and I have such ‘positive energy.’”

Source: China Digital Times, January 29, 2022

【404文库】劳燕东飞｜直面真实的世界

Full text of English translation, https://gaodawei.wordpress.com/2022/01/29/2022-chinese-law-profs-lament-and-encouragement/

Briefings | | February 7, 2022 | Social Stability

Pandemic: Hangzhou and Xiong’an Suffered CCOVID-19

On February 1, China reported 63 COVID-19 infection cases from 8 municipalities and provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong, and others. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is known for hiding COVID-19 information, so the actual number of cases is not known.

Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province has reported cases daily since it first reported an Omicron case on January 26. The Binjiang District, which had the most cases, sent over 300 buses to transfer 2,000 families, with about 9,000 people, from their homes to designed isolation sites. In some situations, the bus took people to certain hotels, but the hotels refused to accept the people. By now, the city has moved 30,000 people into designated isolation sites.

Xiong’an, Beijing’s satellite city, which has been designed to host the Beijing city government (Beijing will host the central government functions), reported five COVID-19 cases recently and locked down the city. However, this is a “secret” lockdown: the government didn’t publicly announce it, but only told the 1.3 million people in the city that they must stay at home and not go out. It also blocked the roads so people couldn’t leave the city. Foreign media confirmed the lockdown. Also commentators pointed out that the infection number was likely to be much higher than five, otherwise the authorities did not need to lock down 1.3 million people.

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