Gaia Hates Your Baby
Kerry Howley | August 6, 2007, 4:26pm
China is trying to craft a softer, gentler image for its population control policies. The current Family Planning Commission slogans strike authorities as a little too...direct.
Slogans such as "Raise fewer babies but more piggies", and "Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected" as well as "One more baby means one more tomb" have been declared crude and counter-productive in the efforts to quell the number of births in the world's most populous nation.
The messages are painted on walls and houses all over China, but the government body charged with implementing the one-child policy, the National Population and Family Planning Commission, believes the slogans are coarse, poorly worded and can damage the government's image.
"If such low-quality slogans, which may cause public complaint and resentment, are not corrected ... the country's family planning efforts in the new era will be hindered," said a report from the commission. Family-planning experts have come up with 190 less alarming slogans, such as "Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children".
Whole thing here.
SSDLH | August 8, 2007, 1:26pm | #
...So complicated, in fact, that it cannot be justified, nor even succinctly explained, without a working knowledge of Mandarin.
Thank you, voice of socialism, for this lesson in humility.
Sorry but I do find it difficult to appreciate your sarcasm. (Or is it not? Am I supposed to feel more uncomfortable this way? ...)
Unless you are trying to distort my words on purpose, I apologize for not having expressed myself clearly. I didn't mean a command of Chinese per se gets you any answer. I mean a bilingual, and if possible, multilingual capacity helps. The thing is, when our media filters out certain information, we can still get it via international channels. But when your media presents you with altered facts, some of you tend to buy the extant version of it. In this case, many posters are obviously appalled by the article's depiction, which is not 100% truth. -- After all, with a better-executed freedom of press you have been boasting of, it doesn't change the fact that your media is as prone to stereotyping as any one else in the world. Honestly, were I not who I am, and had I not known how much an overstatement it is, I would be shocked by it as well.
In their post-WW2 population policy, our government failed to take the limited resources into consideration at first, so years later, they were forced to make up for its consequences. One-child policy is only an expedient, and it does incur various problems -- that's another big topic -- but not as what some posters interpret in an out-of-context, presumptuous manner. In fact, I myself was born under this policy, and I don't have much to complain about.
The bolded part is where you to lose a point. My people are often accused of being politically-oriented in each and every aspect of life, when now it's you who automatically equalize my opnion with an ideology. Yet I stand on behalf of myself. I'm telling you what I know about the issue (i.e. crude slogans painted "all over the China" is an exaggeration). It's just I happen to come from the place that is being discussed. Voice of socialism? Nah, it is the voice of an individual that differs from yours. Your summary of my image raises me too high, really, for my love for my country doesn't grant me the duty to defend her present government. All I attempted to do was offering some different angles that you're not likely to approach otherwise. And it is beyond business, but out of pure personal interest. What do you think I can get from the communist party by stacking up lengthy posts on a foreign website? A pamphlet of Mao's thoughts?
I hate rambling but it seemed nothing could be covered in a few words. Anyway, thanks for all the philanthropic sympathy above.
Cheers.
