Real problems Graphic Solutions Workshop- Environment

We have been given the topic of environment to research, we are going to look into the topics within environment and choose one to research further into as a group.

• Human overpopulation
• Intensive farming
• Nuclear issues
• Climate change 
• Pollution
• Genetic engineering 
• Nuclear issues 

After briefly researching into each category we have decided to research further into Human Overpopualtion as we feel this is going to be the most interesting subject. 

China's one child policy

China's one child policy has been in place for over 30 years

Who introduced the one-child policy and why?

During Chairman Mao’s rule, China’s birthrate was as high as four children per family and there were food shortages that led to famine.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Communist party decided to restrict China’s population growth in order to stabilise food and water supplies and improve individual prosperity.

In September 1980, an open letter to the country was issued by the Communist party calling for “one child per couple” rules to “keep the population below 1.2 billion at the end of the 20th century”.

How large an impact has it had?

According to the Chinese Health ministry, doctors have performed 336 million abortions and 196 million sterilisations, since 1971 and inserted 403 million intrauterine devices.

By contrast, in the United States, which has a population a quarter of the size of China’s, there have been 50 million abortions since 1973.

Chinese officials believe the one child policy has reduced the population by 400 million but demographers, citing falling birth rates across Asia, believe it is closer to 100 million.

Are there any exceptions?

The policy has been a patchwork of measures. China’s ethnic minorities, such as Uighurs and Tibetans, are exempt.

Families in the countryside are permitted to have a second child if their first is a girl and recently couples that were only children themelves were allowed to apply to have more kids.

What are the punishments for breaking the policy?

Women are regularly inspected to check if they are pregnant, even well into their 40s and 50s. Those who are found to be in breach can suffer forced abortions and even sterilisations.

In millions of cases, families have been successful in hiding new children. The 1990 census recorded 23 million births but the 2000 census put the number of ten-year-olds at 26 million, suggesting at least three million babies had escaped the notice of family planning officials.

Those who are caught can also opt to pay a “social upbringing fee”, usually a multiple of the average income in the city where the child is born, designed to cover the cost of education and healthcare.

When will China stop the one-child policy?

Demographers have warned the Communist party that it must take drastic action to encourage more babies or face a rapidly ageing society. By 2030, a quarter of China’s population will be over 60. However, in March 2008 officials predicted the policy would stay in play for “at least a decade”.

In the late 1970s, the Chinese government introduced a number of measures to reduce the country's birth rate and slow the population growth rate. The most important of the new measures was a one-child policy, which decreed that couples in China could only have one child.

In 1950 the rate of population change in China was 1.9 per cent each year. If this doesn't sound high, consider that a growth rate of only 3 per cent will cause the population of a country to double in less than 24 years!

Previous Chinese governments had encouraged people to have a lot of children to increase the country's workforce. But by the 1970s the government realised that current rates of population growth would soon become unsustainable.

The one-child policy

The one-child policy, established in 1979, meant that each couple was allowed just one child. Benefits included increased access to education for all, plus childcare and healthcare offered to families that followed this rule.

Problems with enforcing the policy:

Those who had more than one child didn't receive these benefits and were fined.

The policy was keenly resisted in rural areas, where it was traditional to have large families.

In urban areas, the policy has been enforced strictly but remote rural areas have been harder to control.

Many people claim that some women, who became pregnant after they had already had a child, were forced to have an abortion and many women were forcibly sterilised. There appears to be evidence to back up these claims.

Impact of the policy

The birth rate in China has fallen since 1979, and the rate of population growth is now 0.7 per cent.

There have been negative impacts too - due to a traditional preference for boys, large numbers of female babies have ended up homeless or in orphanages, and in some cases killed. In 2000, it was reported that 90 per cent of foetuses aborted in China were female.

As a result, the gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted. Today it is thought that men outnumber women by more than 60 million.

Long-term implications

China's one-child policy has been somewhat relaxed in recent years. Couples can now apply to have a second child if their first child is a girl, or if both parents are themselves only-children.

While China's population is now rising more slowly, it still has a very large total population (1.3 billion in 2008) and China faces new problems, including:

the falling birth rate - leading to a rise in the relative number of elderly people

fewer people of working age to support the growing number of elderly dependants - in the future China could have an ageing population

Couples have to now apply to have a second child
Recent article by the telegraph 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11374267/China-struggles-to-loosen-one-child-policy-as-couples-urged-to-apply-for-second-child.html

Plan and develop a graphic response to address / resolve the issue

We want to

Raise awareness of over population

We are going to go for shock tactics to make people more aware of over population and hit them with the facts.

• Harsh ways of removing girls from the population 
• Why boys are favoured over girls 
• Birth credits
• Abortion 

We have come up with a few visual ideas as a group, one that could be quite interesting is maybe looking into wheres wally but a Chinese version to hit the audience a illustrative visual. 
Also we are thinking a poster with baby pink and blue on would work well to get the message across about abortion, the poster would include a lot more blue than pink as there is more men than women in China. 

As we are going for the shocking ratio facts we have found out that for every 1 girl in China there are 12 other boys making the human population in china very uneven. 

How our research has developed:

• Environment
• Overpopulation 
• China's one child policy 
• Sex-selective abortion

Something that was on my Instagram today from National Geographic in relation to the research that we have carried out today about over population in China. 

Photo by Micheal Yamashita

Hordes of travelers passing through Shenzhen Railway Station during 'chunyun', the worlds largest annual human migration. This 40 day high traffic period begins in the weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year as millions od migrant workers travel to their hometowns to spend the holidays with their families.