Liberty, Harm and Utility:What J.S. Mill Would Say About China’s Birth Control ProgramJing-Bao Nie, BMed, MMed, MA, PhDBioethics Centre, University of Otago, New Zealand(adjunct) Hunan Normal University and Peking University, China

The Role of China in the Historic Achievement in Reducing Poverty

Two Human-Made “Miracles” in ChinaRapid economic growthRapid decline of fertility rate

Two Strategic National PoliciesGaige kaifan 改革开放 (the reform and open policy)

◦ From jihua jingji (planned economy) to market economy◦ Relaxed state control over society

Jihua shengyu 计划生育 (the population control policy)◦ Two essential wings and one central goal

To control the quantity of population To improve the quality of population “Fewer but healthier births”

◦ Known as the “one-child policy” Officially translated as “family planning”

◦ From relatively laissez faire to unprecedented state control Literally, “planned reproduction”

China’s Birth Control ProgramA massive project of social engineering by a

authoritarian state “China’s longest socio-political campaign” The most ambitious and intrusive population program ever

undertaken in human historyEnormous and numerous challenging social, political,

cultural and ethical issues In traditional Chinese outlooks

Eg. Confucianism, Daoism (Taoism) In Western theories

Eg. Classic Marxism, Liberalism, Communitarianism, Feminism What J. S. Mill would say?

A dialogue between a major Chinese social practice and a prominent Western moral and political theory

Liberty, Harm and Utility

The Matter of LibertyInternational Responses to the Chinese

program◦ Commendation◦ Criticism and condemnation

The liberty principle◦ “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the

individual is sovereign”Difficulties

◦ Primary vs. secondary liberty How fundamental is the reproductive liberty?

◦ Private vs. public sphere Reproduction is never “self-regarding” only

◦ The problem of harm

The Matter of Utility The Chinese official justification

◦To promote “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of Chinese people”

◦A rational supported by the majority of Chinese

The liberty principle based on the ethical principle of utility

The difficulties◦How to calculate happiness involved◦How to calculate suffering and pain

involved

China’s Birth Control Program: The Claimed Success Poverty reduction and living standard

through prevention of over 300 million births Is the fertility decline a result of the

program? If so, to what extent?

China’s Birth Control Program: A Pyrrhic Victory Extraordinary human and social costs

◦ Actual social and financial costs◦ Social suffering it has caused

Coerced sterilization Coerced abortion Costs mostly beard by women Violence and conflicts

Dire long-term consequences◦ “The single child” syndrome ◦ Abnormal sex ratio at birth

40 million “missing females”resulted mainly from sex-selective abortion

◦ Abnormal structure of population Shortage of labour Elderly care

◦ Negative impacts over rural residents The structured rural-urban injustice and inequality

The Matter of HarmThe harm principleThe difficulties

◦Is overpopulation really a serious social problem?

◦Is bringing more than one child into the world really a burden to society?

Mill’s Thoughts on Population Control If the opinion were once generally established among the

labouring class that their welfare required a due regulation of the number of families, the respectable and well-conducted of the body would conform to the prescription, and only those would exempt themselves from it, who were in the habit of making light of social obligations generally, and there would be then an evident justification for converting the moral obligation against bringing children into the world who are a burthen to the community, into a legal one; just as in many other cases of the progress of opinion, the law ends by enforcing against recalcitrant minorities, obligations which to be useful must be general, and which, from a sense of utility, a large majority have voluntarily consented to take upon themselves. (Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Ch vii, ξ2,Emphysis added)

What Mill Would SayAbout China’s Program?His serious concerns

◦ Liberty of thought and discussion◦ Consent of people ◦ State coercion and violence◦ Government intervention over society

Supporting the Chinese program in principle◦ Concern about poverty ◦ Not giving adequate attention to the human and

social costs paid for the sake or in the name of common demographic good

Chinese practice indicating some key theoretical difficulties in Mill’s moral and political philosophy◦ Social utility vs. individual liberty

Beyond Mill’s LiberalismThe primacy of liberty and justice

◦Rawls’ liberalism Each person possesses an inviolability founded on

justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. … Therefore in a just society the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.

(A Theory of Justice, ξ1)The essential importance of community What would contemporary Western

liberalism and communitarianism say about China’s birth control program?

Acknowledgements

The research has been conducted as a part of a larger project, “Predicaments of Social Engineering: The Ideology and Ethics of China’s Birth Control Program”, supported by a grant from the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand.