ONE CHILD NATION (BORN IN CHINA)
(director/writer: Nanfu Wang/Jialing Zhang; cinematographers: Nanfu Wang/Yuanchen Liu; editor: Nanfu Wang; music: Nathan Halpern/Chris Ruggiero; cast: Brian Stuy, Longian Stuy: Runtime: 88; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Nanfu Wang/Jialing Zhang/Julie Goldman/ Christopher Clements/Carolyn Hepburn/Christoph Jorg; Amazon Studioss; 2019-USA-in Mandarin & English, with English subtitles when necessary)
“Condemns Red China’s single-child policy that ran from 1979 until 2015 to fend off its population crisis.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The Chinese-born documentarian Nanfu Wang (“I Am Another You”/”Hooligan Sparrow”), who recently became an American citizen and a mother of a baby boy, and Jialing Zhang are co-directors of this powerful documentary that makes a personal statement and at the same time condemns Red China’s single-child policy that ran from 1979 until 2015 to curb its population crisis and famine problem. Currently China has a two-child policy in place, with the same propaganda organ proclaiming how necessary is this revised policy.
Wang and her co-director Zhang revisit China (Jiangxi Province, where Wang’s family roots are) and make note of all the horrors unleashed by that repressive social experimental policy. Wang, born in 1985, is the daughter of provincial parents in that eastern rural area who were permitted by the Chinese authorities to see if they could get a son by five years after her birth. If a girl, the child would most likely be killed or abandoned (supposedly during this time period at least some 400,000 were eliminated to relieve the population problem but the true number is incalculable). We are informed that women who violated the policy were often forcibly sterilized or their homes bulldozed.
To this day, there are still many family planning officials reluctant to question the program’s good intentions and admit to how brutal that policy was, even if that policy included the abandonment of unwanted girls, the separation of twins, and illegal trafficking and adoption.
The directors interview some of the locals who lived under this policy. One of them interviewed was the 84-year-old midwife, Huaru Yuan, who delivered Wang and was in charge of some 60,000 sterilizations and abortions. The much government decorated midwife supported the policy, as did Wang’s family, but now wishes to “atone for my sins.”
Another horrifying interview was with Duan Yueneng, a trafficker. He calmly tells of how babies were often discarded in trash bins, or by the roadside. He would try to recover those still alive and transport them to various orphanages to be sold to Western families for adoption. Forged documents meant the adopting families were unaware of the infants’ real backgrounds. The government allowed for all this and its officials often took kickbacks.
A Utah residing couple, Brian and Long Lan Stuy, are adoptive parents of three Chinese girls, who when interviewed tell us they have developed a database to try to reunite Chinese adopted girls with their biological families. But that is a tough thing to do and has met with little success.
Though it only goes so far in pointing its finger at Red China’s evil act, it’s still a bold investigative report showing the world the dirty little secrets of the social engineering program that were swept under the rug by the Communist regime.
REVIEWED ON 12/22/2019 GRADE: B+ https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/