The Iron Fist Campaign was a

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

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

Puning Puning ( zh, c=, p=Pǔníng, s=普宁, t=普寧; Teochew: Pou2 leng5), officially Puning City, is a county-level city located in Eastern Guangdong, China, under the administration of the city, Jieyang. Nevertheless, its administrative power in ec ...

, a county in

Guangdong, China ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

Background

In 1979, the

Chinese government The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a Unitary state, unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's ...

introduced the

one-child policy The one-child policy ( zh, c=一孩政策, p=yī hái zhèngcè) was a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. The progr ...

, 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

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

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. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. 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) render ...

. 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 that it has more than ten million members a ...

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 2010s in Guangdong Law enforcement in China Political scandals in China Compulsory sterilization Puning