“China One Child Policy”
The program of “One child policy” was first established around the 1970s and 1980s by China’s central government. The primary reason for initiating the program was to limit the great majority of the country’s family units to one child. The policy’s implementation was to reduce the china population growth rate regarding its demographic status. In 2015, China’s government announced its closure, which was planned to end in 2016. The establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 triggered the initiation and the promotion of childbirth control together with the family planning (Hu, 365). However, these efforts remained sporadic and voluntary until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. By the end of the 1970s, china’s population was nearly reaching the one billion mark in terms of population. In this era, China was led by a new pragmatic leadership through a ruler known as Deng Xiaoping, who seemed to have begun considering a serious curbing of the population, growing at a higher rate. In late 1978, the government of China initiated a voluntary program. It was to ensure and encouraged families to have at most two children. The paper analyses the philosopher’s perspective regarding the issues that came from China’s former one-child policy.
According to Utilitarianism, an individual’s action or a group of individuals is usually right only if they maximize doing good and alternatively minimizes doing badly. The philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill considered good as a pleasure or the being of an individual or society. As a result, actions seemed morally right only if an individual maximized pleasure or wellbeing by reducing individual suffering and pains. When the china government established China’s one-child policy, they focused on the china population’s wellbeing. The approach the China People’s Republic party used could also be referred to as hedonistic Utilitarianism. According to this theory, the program and policies were established based on the rightness and actionable concepts to determine the consequences of pleasure and good plans. Act utilitarianism attempts to explain the utilitarian calculation regarding every move that China’s government could have on every individual within the country. By applying these calculated moves, the states would determine the moral rightness or wrongness of every action that may occur on the population (Zhang, 230). The philosophical act of the rule of Utilitarianism eased the burden that the act of Utilitarianism had placed on the practical reasoning the individuals through the establishment of the moral rules that could have brought the best consequences ever in a society. The rule best illustrates Utilitarianism; every individual should give birth to two children, preferable one child. As a general rule, society would be better off because the rule of thump may better society’s consequences.
Furthermore, according to the philosopher Greek Aristotle, ethics is about the agent, but not actions or consequences. The philosopher further stated that living an ethical or good life circumnavigate the individual who possesses the right character traits or virtues. As a result, making the individual develop moral character. The one-child policy leads to consequential action beyond the goal of reducing population growth. The government making society live by the moral rules, virtues encouraged the development of good habits among the individual living China society. On the other hand, the government’s essence introducing China’s one-child policy manages to develop virtuous character traits disposition so society could act in a particular way, thus avoiding bad character traits or vices of the character. The philosophers’ virtues, termed as character traits or virtues, include courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, generosity, and good temper. One of the challenging concepts that the theorist should surmount while figuring out character traits is the virtues. Given the Republic of China has different cultural backgrounds, they tend to hold different character traits regarding the virtuous character. The consequence of the China one-child policy seemed to be problematic following the normative theory’s aims to arrive at the standard or norms of living a moral life.
The Deontology is among the philosophical approach of assessing the ethical choices in society. In the case of the Deontology, the results are usually less important compared to the action that an individual or society may take to achieve the set goals. There are some actions that an individual should never pursue in society, no matter how worthy those actions may be. Deontology is all about the fundamental rights and the duties and what an individual’s society ought to do concerning the less consequential actions. Deontology claims that every individual in society must have certain rights of respecting individual dignity and moral duty, together with respecting other people’s rights. According to these philosophical principles, individuals or groups of individuals can never violate the basic rights regardless of what purposes might be served (Lejano, 10). While utilitarianism majors on the overall good, deontology priorities on the right over the good. The govern had to apply the China one-child program to control the moral norm of na individual in society, irrespective of whether an individual or group acted otherwise. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the people of the Republic of China. And it is mandatory for China as a nation to protect its citizen. Immanuel Kant, in his report, “act so that you may treat humanity, both in your person and in that of another, always as an end and never merely as means.” Kant further held his views on the moral requirements regarding the standard of rationality. According to Kant, he regarded the standard as a categorical imperative. Through his claims, Kant stated that the action’s moral status is determined solely based on the rightness or wrongness of the action itself. According to this principle or theory, it is categorically and ethically wrong for an individual to lie regarding any circumstances regardless of the consequences of society’s situation. One of Deontology ethics’ major criticism is that it allows the decision-makers to make certain crucial decisions that may worsen the other choices in the world. The approached of the Deontology ethics is based on the establishment of the basic ‘moral minimums’