Xu Min, 53, of Beijing and his wife lost their 23-year-old son in a car accident last September. Many such bereaved parents are physically too old to conceive again, and most experience depression and struggle financially to support themselves in old age. Xu Min, 53, and his wife lost their 23-year-old son in a car accident last September. Many such bereaved parents are physically too old to conceive again, and most experience depression and struggle financially to support themselves in old age. Photo: Washington Post/William Wan

Panjin: It's been 11 months, and Xu Min still rarely leaves the house.  He spends his days on the couch in front of a TV, trying to block out memories of his dead son. He blames fate for the car accident that killed the 23-year-old last September.  But for the loneliness that will haunt him and his wife the rest of their lives, Mr Xu, 53, blames the Chinese government.


Xu Min's son Painful memories: Baby picture of Xu Zijie. Photo: Washington Post

China told the couple they could only have one child and threatened to take away everything if they did not listen. They were good citizens, he said, ''so for 20 years, we put our whole future and hope into our son''.  Now, they have no one to support them in old age. But even more crushing, Mr Xu said, is they have nothing to live for.

Since the death of his son, the only comfort Xu Min has found has been online forums where other bereaved parents of only children connect with one another. Most nights, Xu stays up late in his son's old bedroom, working on his son's old laptop, calling and messaging other parents. Since the death of his son, the only comfort Xu Min has found has been online forums where other bereaved parents of only children connect with one another. Photo: Washington Post/William Wan

For more than three decades, debate has raged over China's one-child policy, imposed in 1979 to rein in population growth.  It has reshaped Chinese society - with birth rates plunging from 4.77 children per woman in the early 1970s to 1.64 in 2011, according to United Nations estimates - and created the world's most imbalanced gender ratio, with baby boys far outnumbering girls.

Human rights groups have exposed forced abortions, infanticide and involuntary sterilisations, practices banned in theory by the government. Officials are increasingly deliberating whether the long-term economic costs of the policy - including a looming labour shortage - now outweigh the benefits. The government announced last weekend that it is studying possible ways to relax the one-child policy in coming years, state media report.

Largely ignored, however, is a quiet devastation left in the policy's wake: childless parents.

A parent's worst nightmare in any country, the deaths of children in China are even more painful because of the cultural importance of descendents, increasing financial pressures on the elderly and the legal limits on bearing additional offspring.  Few reliable numbers exist on such grieving parents. But one study at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated that there are already more than one million parents who have lost their only child, a number expected to rise rapidly.

Many such parents are too old to conceive again, and some say they regret not pushing for a second child when they could have, even if it would have meant losing their jobs and getting hit with overwhelming fines.  Parents who have lost children describe lives of emptiness and a depression so deep that some thought about suicide.  Almost all characterise their child's death as a crippling financial blow because of how strongly China's elderly tend to depend on their children to supplement modest government pensions.

Many note bitterly the enormous resources the government has plowed into one-child enforcement, creating an entire new wing of bureaucracy down to the township level.  The government collects steep fines from offenders, each year estimated to be in the billions, although the precise amount is kept secret. Yet, the parents complain, it wasn't until 2007 that China began to disburse small sums as compensation to families whose only child had died.

Mr Xu and his wife rarely leave their cramped apartment for fear strangers will bring up the topic of children.  They have tapered off contact with family and friends, finding their pity just as painful. Some friends  suggested they pretend their son, Xu Zijie, had moved abroad or was too busy to visit. Others seemed to avoid them.  ''They view us as bad fortune and worry our bad luck will transfer to them. I can't say I blame them,'' Mr Xu said.
Washington Post