The Iron Fist Campaign was a

compulsory sterilization Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, is a government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done throug ...

program conducted in the summer of 2010 by family planning officials in

Puning Puning (; postal: Puning) is a county-level city in the municipal region of Jieyang, in the southeast of Guangdong Province, China. Economy Puning's main industries include: citrus, Plum, clothing, traditional Chinese medicine and so on. The sp ...

, a county in

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Background

In 1979, the

Chinese government The Government of the People's Republic of China () is an authoritarian political system in the People's Republic of China under the exclusive political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It consists of legislative, executive, m ...

introduced the

one-child policy The term one-child policy () refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. That initiative was part of a much bro ...

, which legally prevents couples from having more than one child, though there are some exemptions. The policy was created to address the country's overpopulation issue and economic problems. By 2010, family planning efforts in

had diminished due to rapid economic growth in the area, as

had become the most successful manufacturing region in the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. However, local family planning officials were pressured to reduce births to meet the nationwide quotas. Chen Hong-Ping, the regional Communist Party chief, launched the Iron Fist Campaign in order to meet these demands.

Campaign

In April 2010, a task force of approximately 600 local officials targeted 9,559 women who had violated the country's one-child policy. The women were required to report to government clinics to undergo

sterilization Sterilization may refer to: * Sterilization (microbiology), killing or inactivation of micro-organisms * Soil steam sterilization, a farming technique that sterilizes soil with steam in open fields or greenhouses * Sterilization (medicine) rende ...

. Family members of those women who had refused sterilization were detained indefinitely until the women complied with the procedure. In some cases, the women themselves were detained. Over the course of the 20-day campaign, 1,377 people were detained. From April to June, over 9,000 women were reported to have been sterilized as a result of the campaign.

Criticism

News of the campaign did not make major headlines outside of local newspapers. He Yafu, an independent expert on family planning in China, suggested that the central government made an effort to conceal the results of the campaign because Chinese law specifically prohibited the means used to enforce it. Provincial officials have reported that the local Puning authorities will be investigated to determine the legality of their actions. Kate Allen of

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...

described the campaign as "appalling" and voiced her opinion that "authorities must condemn this practice immediately".

References

{{reflist 2010 in China Sterilization (medicine) Human rights abuses in China Population density One-child policy Violence against women in China History of Guangdong Law enforcement in China Political scandals in China