Melbourne Event: In conversation with Xinran Xue
On Monday 25 May, acclaimed journalist and novelist Ms Xue Xinran will join Lowy Institute East Asia program Director Merriden Varrall in a conversation about how the one child policy, introduced in 1978, is affecting the Chinese social, economic, and political landscape.
Enacted in 1980, the one child policy was designed to allow China's development to forge ahead. Demographers estimate that at between 100 and 400 million births were averted as a direct result of this policy, and some Chinese argue that this has helped China achieve the momentous task of lifting over 550 million people out of poverty. However, the policy has been controversial, with accusations of human rights abuses in implementation, unusually high sex ratios at birth, as well as concerns about the social implications of a generation of single children.
As part of the Lowy Institute's partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria, tickets will be available at the door for the immensely popular exhibition; A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor, 1736-1795. Tickets for adults are $18 and NGV Members are $14. The exhibition will be open on this day for Lowy Institute guests from 5.15pm - 6.15pm.
Xue Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958 and was a successful journalist and radio presenter in China. In 1997 she moved to London, where she began work on her seminal, bestselling book about Chinese women's lives, The Good Women of China. Since then she has written a regular column for the Guardian, appeared frequently on radio and TV and has published the acclaimed Sky Burial, the novel Miss Chopsticks, the ground breaking book of oral history China Witness, a book of her Guardian columns called What the Chinese Don't Eat and Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother, about mothers and their lost daughters. She lives in London but travels regularly to China. Her charity, The Mothers' Bridge of Love (www.mothersbridge.org), was founded to help disadvantaged Chinese children and to build a bridge of understanding between the West and China.
Dr Merriden Varrall is Director, East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute. Click here for her full bio.
