Interviews with Chen Guangcheng

China’s one-child policy is that a couple can only have one child and in China if you have more than one [child] then you will be in violation of the law. [Officially known as the Family Planning Policy, the one-child policy of the People´s Republic of China was enacted in 1978 and restricts most urban couples to only one child]. The problem is this one-child policy has bought many, many negative influences to Chinese society. In the executive branch of the government there is now this rule called “one mistake and you’re out” and that means even if you do all your work well, but you don’t enforce the one-child policy efficiently, then the government will not recognize your work, and it will negatively affect your promotion chances.

The most important point is that after decades of this family planning policy how many lives are killed. This has destroyed the concept that the people of China have had for thousands of years that “human lives are precious to the heavens.” The whole society is walking down a path that has no respect for human life.

Recently there was a government order to tear down a house, and the worker simply drove the excavator in to crush the home and killed the people living in it; this kind of event has happened twice just in recent days [On March 27, 2013, a citizen named Song Heyi was crushed by a bulldozer while trying to protect his land from a forced demolition in Zhongmu County, Zhenzhou City, Henan Province. On March 30, 2013, a citizen named Zhang Ruqiong was crushed under a cement truck while protesting to save her house.].

I think we see that this driver has no problem driving an excavator over people. This kind of mentality that formed in him [the worker], to not take human life seriously – to completely see no value in human lives, are long-term effects of the negatives I mentioned earlier.

In reality when the government is enforcing the one-child policy they rely solely on violence. The government will use family planning department [National Health and Family Planning Commission of China] workers under the leadership of local [Communist] Party leaders to form into teams to use violence. From the central government’s family planning workers to local township family planning workers, the estimate by the government itself is that there are 500,000 workers focused on enforcing the one-child policy [as also noted in a Wall Street Journal interview with population expert Wang Feng on March 12, 2013:].

But every time they [the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China] have a major violent enforcement of this policy all the related people in the Chinese Communist Party and the government will join them to enforce the policy.

Therefore, I would say the real number of workers dedicated to enforce the policy is over two-million people. As soon as someone reports to the government that someone is pregnant or is having a second child, the workers of the family planning department will use any means necessary to come to your home, put you in their car and take you to the hospital for a forced abortion and sterilization operation.

Many times these teams would come at night, with weapons such as clubs. They will jump over the walls around your home, open your front gate, and drag pregnant women off their beds without giving them a chance to put on decent clothes, and force them into the car and to the hospital for an abortion. Forced to not just abort, but also be sterilized.

They also force you to sign, under coercion, an agreement with them. Of course, in reality no one signs of free will but if you don’t then they will force you to sign, because once you’ve signed it then it absolves them of any possible legal ramifications from what they have done to you. What I have just described is occurring very commonly in China.

If they don’t catch the pregnant woman then they will arrest her relatives such as her spouse, siblings, parents, even her uncles and aunts are all possible targets to be captured by them and be taken back to the family planning department and locked up for a few days to even months at a time, and beaten every day. Some places there will even be ridiculous rules, for example if in this area one family has violated the one-child policy they [authorities] will arrest everyone within 50 meters of that house and lock them up.

The people [in China] live very close to one another, most of the homes are built together so we are easily talking about up to twenty families being arrested, and beaten up while they are locked away. This has been done for decades, and has severely destroyed any chance for China to have rule of law. They [authorities] will lock you up in the family planning department and beat you everyday and then will use a cover story and say that they are merely “educating” them and “teaching” them about the one-child policy.

They will say this is a “training class” and force you to pay them “tuition.” The entire family planning department has become a money-making organization.

Chen Guangcheng was born into a poor family on November 12, 1971 in China’s Shandong Province. As an infant, Chen suffered a fever that left him permanently blind. Chen developed a keen interest in legal practice. Teaching himself the law by studying legal texts and auditing various courses, Chen assisted people in his village with legal matters. In 2003, he married an English teacher and the couple had two children.

Chen’s activism began in 1996 when he petitioned the central government in Beijing over taxes that were improperly levied against his family. According to Chinese law, families with disabled persons receive tax exemptions that were not being granted to Chen. The campaign was successful and Chen began advocating for people with disabilities who had similar grievances with the government. Soon, he gained notoriety as a prominent activist for the disabled in China.

In 2005, Chen spent months investigating reports of forced abortions and sterilization being carried out by Chinese authorities to enforce the country’s one child policy, officially known as the Family Planning Policy. This law was enacted in 1978 and restricts most urban couples to a single child. When his investigation was complete, Chen filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the women he interviewed against the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China’s office in the city of Linyi. This was the first suit of its kind challenging the implementation of the one child policy. The case was rejected and the local government retaliated by placing Chen in de facto house arrest. In 2006, Chen was formally tried and charged with instigating destruction of public property and disturbing the peace , which Chen decried as baseless given his house arrest and constant surveillance by the police. He was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison. After the proceedings, Amnesty International declared Chen a prisoner of conscience.

Chen was released from prison in 2010 only to once again be placed under house arrest by local authorities. His house was routinely monitored by security agents who prevented anyone from entering or exiting. Chen and his family were subject to constant harassment and abuse during this period.

Chen escaped from house arrest in April 2012 and fled to Beijing, where he sought refuge at the United States Embassy. In May 2012, Chen left the embassy after several weeks of negotiations, during which the Chinese government provided assurances that it would release the dissident from house arrest and investigate the actions taken against Chen by Shandong provincial authorities. Soon after leaving the embassy, Chen learned that his family had received numerous threats and feared the government would break its promises. He decided to leave China with his family and was offered a visiting scholar position by New York University. Chen accepted and arrived in New York with his family on May 19, 2012. He continues his work from the United States, advocating for human rights and democratic reform in China.