> I didn't even know they still had these things. I figured they went away in the 1980's or 1990's. I thought it was common knowledge. You could use the Hanlon

> I didn't even know they still had these things. I figured they went away in the 1980's or 1990's. I thought it was common knowledge. You could use the Hanlon's razor right about now: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [or some other non-significant chance reason]. Many American news companies do report on China's one-child policies with all the gory details. I saw a documentary on it on PBS just last year. There are lots of places where you can read up about that, just don't expect honest journalism from Rupert Murdoch's WSJ. One other point is, you probably see all the Malthusian theories on HN? This is not limited to HN, you won't believe how many people in elite colleges and institutions -- once you warm them up -- will confess that they think it's a good thing that China has these policies. It's like a more extreme version of family planning in their view, it's actually arguably a good thing in a lot of people's thoughts. It's not as lurid and extreme as women being thrown acid to their faces in Pakistan, or little girls being married at young ages against their will -- there is no argument here that it's a bad thing. It's easy to do journalism in these cases, and the extreme nature of the content comes in such a far-out way that journalists don't even need to sensationalize it to package it for selling! In other words, lazy journalists will find easy content first.