Time for one-child policy to change

On February 24th a YunFei, a 20 month old girl, was being taken by her paternal grandparents to be raised at their home in Guizhou Province. Instead, the grandparents left the train with her and attempted to kill her by placing her in the path of an oncoming train. Yunfei survived -- with both legs amputated. (Read the full story here)

The reason for this? Her mother spectulated that it was because the she had borne two daughters instead of sons.

The impact of the one-child policy continues to be felt far. Whether through child abductions and kidnappings, to infanticide, or infant abandonment, China need to move forward in as forceful a way as they did when the revolution occured. Truly, if there was need for a revolution, it would be one to shake preset beliefs to their foundations - and change how children in China are treated.

Today the LA Times reported on the potential for China to re-address its one child policy. More important than the discussion of the policy, will be a strong stand, backed by action, in determining what occurs to people who violate the laws in areas like kidnapping and child trafficking or infanticide. Make girls acceptable to family and society. Maybe pay families who have girls; free secondary education for second or third daughters; how about accepting all babies and making them legal, instead of forcing parents to hide daughters so they can have a son; how about hiring and training a force of 5,000 detectives to investigate and crack down on child trafficking -and making the penalty for getting in the way of the investigations worse than if that person had a no-papers child.

It's time for China to wake up, face the rest of teh world, admit there is a serious flaw in the one-child policy, and get aggressive on ways to deal with the issue now and in the future. How many YunFei's are there, that we never hear of? The drip of these issues hitting the press should continue until the impact of the full waterfall is felt and China reacts.