Other state organizations such as the military and police have their own internal family-planning units, as do state-owned companies. The commission also has its own archives and statistics and propaganda departments affiliate centers for pharmacological research, film production and publishing and a consulting company that handles exhibitions and conferences. These village-level offices are the most basic building blocks of China’s birth-planning machinery, a bloated behemoth that goes from some 85 million part-time employees at the grass-roots level all the way up to half a million full-time employees at the National Population and Family Planning Commission. In addition to cluster leaders like Green Chrysanthemum, Huangjiapu, population 500, had 15 full-timers tasked with family-planning matters. Not one person in her group exceeded the two-child limit, she proudly told me. Everybody knows each other so well,” she said. Until recently, she also earned an extra $60 a year as a “cluster leader,” keeping track of 10 households’ reproductive habits and reporting these details to the village’s family-planning commission. Green Chrysanthemum was a cheery 45-year-old woman who ran the snack shop in a tiny village called Huangjiapu, Yicheng County. This took the saying, “Know thy neighbor,” to a new level. It showed what kind of contraceptives they used whether they had one or two children if they were sterilized, pregnant, married or single. Ma Qingju, or “Green Chrysanthemum,” used to have a board on her wall telling her which of her friends were pregnant. In this excerpt from her new book, “ One Child: One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment,” journalist Mei Fong explains the horrors behind the enforcement of that mandate. This alters the one-child policy that was introduced in 1978 to control the country’s population. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China - starting this year, families will be able to have two children.

One Child by Mei Fong