Illegitimate Birth of the One-Child Policy
For 35 years the one-child policy loomed large in Western perceptions of China, and news that Beijing will now permit all couples a second child has prompted a spate of commentary. The policy’s origins, however, are not widely known. Perhaps they are felt to be self-evident. This draconian measure might seem to have been a stereotypically Chinese response to a crisis of overpopulation, shaped by Asiatic traditions of state supremacy and implemented with Maoist brutality. But that description is almost entirely wrong.
Friday Roundup, January 31st
A New Birth of the Old Freedom: David Upham in our Books feature this week reviews Gerard Magliocca's new biography of John Bingham and his Fourteenth Amendment: As to Magliocca’s second claim—the revolutionary character of the Amendment—the evidence that he presents is flatly contradictory. As far as Bingham was concerned, the Amendment served to renew and restore, and not overthrow, the Framers’ Constitution. While Magliocca concludes that Bingham and his colleagues “created” a “new multiracial Republic,” many Republicans, including Bingham, had always believed that the Republic was multiracial and had rejected Taney’s holding in Dred Scott in favor of the common…
