What is China's one-child policy?: Author's Note

There was something about this assignment that made people say the oddest things when I mentioned it to them. Some wondered if I'd end up on a special list, marked by the Chinese government for writing about the one-child rule. As if this policy were a secret. I wrote this piece concurrently with an assignment about how thousands of children in China were being named “Olympics” in honor of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The juxtaposition of these two filled my research with the history of the Chinese family, strict family planning and population control with scenes and stories of new families celebrating their country as well as creating good luck and a sense of individuality for these infants by giving them a specialized name.

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