The New York Times Book Review - John Parker
…[Fong] makes disconcertingly clear that the repercussions of population control will continue to reverberate throughout China. The policy itself remains a monument to official callousness, and Fong's book pays moving testimony to the suffering and forbearance of its victims…The greatest strength of Fong's book is her reporting…
From the Publisher
Honorable Mention, ASJA 2017 Writing Awards "A searing, important, and eminently readable exploration of China's one-child policy." — NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS “The policy itself remains a monument to official callousness, and Fong’s book pays moving testimony to the suffering and forbearance of its victims.” — NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Not to be missed ... [Fong] combines tough, broad economic analysis with individual stories." — ECONOMIST / 1843 “A timely, important work that takes stock of the one-child policy’s damage…ONE CHILD is, like the policy’s abolition, long overdue, and Ms. Fong was the perfect person to write it.” — WALL STREET JOURNAL “Fong’s fine book is a moving and at times harrowing account of the significance of decisions taken by a small coterie of men with too much faith in science and ideology, and too little in humanity.” — GUARDIAN “Fong writes eloquently and with an authority that reflects her knowledge of many cultures ... A deeply moving account of a policy that looks set to haunt China (and the world) for decades.” — INDEPENDENT (UK) “With impeccable timing, [Fong's] new book offers a superb overview... Fong writes in an easy, accessible style, and in 200 pages takes us behind the scenes of the Sichuan earthquake, the Olympic stadium in Beijing, the dancing grannies, the migrant workers, the orphanages, the transnational adoption of Chinese baby girls, birth tourism, and surrogacy. She fills in the background to these familiar subjects with impressive research and interviews, conducted over many years.” — LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS "Fong excels in telling the personal stories of others, providing the reader with insight into how an Orwellian policy, rarely understood by outsiders, has played out in the lives of over a billion people." — MS. “The country's one-child policy, to be officially phased out in 2016, created more far-reaching social distortions than even its most vociferous critics realized, argues Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fong in this timely exposé of a reproductive regime whose inner workings Chinese officials have tried hard to keep under wraps… Finished just before the announcement of the policy's demise, One Child is a touching and captivating anthropological investigation of one of the most invasive laws ever devised.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS "Timely ... Compassionate ... Fong illumines individual grief and dignity ... [Her] human-scale portrayal of individual stories, weaving in her own fraught journey toward motherhood as well, makes for an approachable and edifying treatment." — LIBRARY JOURNAL “Mei Fong’s brilliant exploration of China’s one-child policy must change the way we talk about China’s rise. One Child is lucid, humane, and unflinching; it is vital reading for anyone focused on the future of China’s economy, its environment, or its politics. It not only clarifies facts and retires myths, but also confronts the deepest questions about the meaning of parenthood.” — EVAN OSNOS, National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition “Eye-opening, powerful, and utterly gripping, One Child had me hooked from page one. Mei Fong possesses a rare eye —
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"Finished just before the announcement of the policy's demise, One Child is a touching and captivating anthropological investigation of one of the most invasive laws ever devised." Kirkus
Library Journal - Audio
06/01/2016
China's infamous one-child policy lasted just 35 years. Forced sterilizations, gruesome late-term abortions, an overseas adoption boom, and baby trafficking emerged as by-products of the draconian law. What was touted as a "necessary step in [China's] Herculean efforts to lift the population…from abject poverty" resulted in repercussions that "continue to shape how one in six people in the world are born, live, and die." The consequences were dire: the policy "rapidly created a population that is too old, too male, and quite possibly, too few." Generations of singletons are caught in a preposterous bind: overcoddled and overindulged, while facing impossible expectations by desperate parents. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fong, whose Malaysian Chinese background provided insider access, blends policy and the personal experiences of those affected for a staggering first title; alas, it's better read on the page. Narrator Janet Song sounds as if she's too often on the verge of tears, which might be appropriate for the most inhumane tragedies, but the less wrenching sections hardly warrant such overwrought pitch. VERDICT The disappointing presentation pales in comparison to the significance of the contents, making Child an important acquisition for all libraries intending to enhance their international collections. ["Fong's human-scale portrayal of individual stories, weaving in her own fraught journey toward motherhood as well, makes for an approachable and edifying treatment": LJ 1/16 starred review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal
★ 01/01/2016
This timely investigative report, researched and written (excepting a minor update, not seen at time of review) before the recent dismantling of China's infamous one-child policy, clearly predicts its demise. Malaysian-born Chinese journalist Fong writes a compassionate account of a chilling social experiment of staggering impact. The Chinese Communist Party's quota on children was implemented to address poverty and enable economic growth, but its repercussions are profound. The 35-year practice has brought a severe, chronic baby shortage to the world's most populous country, along with a shortage of women, a great and growing disproportion of elderly people, and generations of children raised in a quirky social environment, subject to both great coddling and scarily lofty expectations. Coerced abortions and sterilizations, situations of baby trafficking, and other horrors have been perpetrated on a numbingly large scale, but Fong illumines individual grief and dignity. In her travels across urban and rural China, she meets a matchmaker, a barefoot doctor, an abandoned husband, a former family planning official responsible for hundreds of forced abortions, a crusader against corruption in China's adoption system, and numerous parents, grandparents, and children. VERDICT The vast ironies and evils of the one-child policy are hard to comprehend, but Fong's human-scale portrayal of individual stories, weaving in her own fraught journey toward motherhood as well, makes for an approachable and edifying treatment.—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus
APRIL 2016 - AudioFile
In 1980, faced with a burgeoning population and its resultant economic pressures, China enacted a family-planning policy that would, with few exceptions, limit families to one child. Janet Song’s clear, smoothly paced narration is well suited to this fascinating and informative account of the effects of the one-child edict (which in 2015 was changed to a two-child policy). She guides listeners through the factual, historical, and political underpinnings of the policy and how it has affected all aspects of Chinese society. In a gentler yet straightforward tone, she also delivers heartfelt accounts of how the policy has directly and indirectly affected individuals. All in all, Song’s narration is an excellent complement to Fong’s well-organized account. S.E.G. Winner of AdioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2015-12-06
Widespread female infanticide and officials jailing pregnant women's families to induce them to surrender to abortions—these are scenes not from a dystopian novel but from China's family planning bureaucracy. The country's one-child policy, to be officially phased out in 2016, created more far-reaching social distortions than even its most vociferous critics realized, argues Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fong in this timely exposé of a reproductive regime whose inner workings Chinese officials have tried hard to keep under wraps. The author, a longtime China correspondent, crisscrossed the country talking with peasants, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and dissidents, and she narrates her travels in a conversational, convivial tone, also discussing her own struggles to conceive. Given the degree to which family planning is embedded in the fabric of the country, it is difficult to predict how the abrupt reversal will play out. Fong describes "China's birth-planning machinery" as "a bloated behemoth that goes from some 85 million part-time employees at the grass-roots level all the way up to half a million full-time employees at the National Population and Family Planning Commission." The author uncovers vast regional differences in how the law has been enforced: while some provinces saw huge numbers of women forcibly sterilized, in others, "authorities actually encouraged" large families "so they could collect more fines." Contemporary China's gender imbalance is approaching unprecedented levels, and the massive surplus of boys presages problems for both men and women. Although they contribute financially nearly as much as their husbands, women are not traditionally named on house titles, and "given that much of the recent wealth creation in China has come from appreciating values in soaring property markets, Chinese women have therefore been left out of what is arguably the biggest accumulation of residential real estate wealth in history: some $27 trillion worth" by some estimates. Finished just before the announcement of the policy's demise, One Child is a touching and captivating anthropological investigation of one of the most invasive laws ever devised.