Reflections from Pastor John Cao is a series of poetry and writings from the recently released Chinese Christian prisoner of conscience exclusively published by ChinaAid. The piece below was written on April 3, 2024 and has been minimally edited for clarity. To read more of Pastor John Cao’s poetry, one can purchase the collection written while he was imprisoned, Living Lyrics: Poems from Prison.
Thirty years ago, Pastor Wang Yi began to cry out, telling everyone that family planning was a wrong national policy. He not only wrote articles to demonstrate the misleading nature of family planning, but he also tried to turn the tide with his personal and church’s limited strength. He led church members to distribute flyers at major hospitals, telling young women who went for abortions about the dangers of the procedure. At the same time, he told those women that if they couldn’t afford to raise children due to economic reasons, they could give their babies to their church, and they would take good care of their children. In this way, Wang Yi and others saved quite a few lives. To give just one example: a female college student became pregnant out of wedlock, abandoned by the man and rejected by her family, but the church encouraged her not to have an abortion. As a result, a young couple from the Early Rain Covenant Church adopted the child born to this female college student.
At that time, I also wrote a few articles telling people about the absurdity of family planning, but I was just a timid person who only talked and didn’t act. I was far behind Pastor Wang Yi.
After thirty years of family planning, during which countless tragic stories occurred, China’s infant birth rate finally reached the expectations of the initiators: the birth population has sharply decreased. Now many obstetrics and gynecology doctors are changing careers, there is a wave of closures in obstetrics and gynecology departments, and kindergartens are closing on a large scale. China’s population has been experiencing negative growth for more than two years. In 2022, the birth population was 9.56 million and the death population was 10.41 million. In 2023, only about 7 million babies will be born, and the negative growth is getting larger and larger. Some sources predict that if China does not take measures to change the trend of declining birth rates, the population may drop to around 600 million in 50 years.
Facts have proven that Pastor Wang Yi is a person who is the first to show concern, and facts have also proven that family planning is a wrong national policy that harms the country and the people.
A great power is not measured by the area of the country, but by the population of the country. Canada has a larger area than China, but it is not considered a great power because Canada’s population is too small. Japan has a very small area, but it can be considered a great power because its population is comparable to that of Russia.
The population of the United States is increasing at a rate of 10 million per year, and as the base expands, it will increase by 20 million per year in the future. Fifty years later, China’s population will drop to 600 million, while the population of the United States will reach about 1 billion, and the population of India will reach 1.5 billion. It will be difficult for China to compete with countries like the United States and India. China’s high-speed economic growth is mainly due to the demographic dividend. Now that China’s population is plummeting, China’s dream of “leading the way” for the world may also become a bubble.
Although the family planning policy was loosened seven years ago, it was too late, because the entire nation has developed a culture of having fewer children, and the cost of raising children has greatly increased, leading to people’s unwillingness to have children. In a few years, the whole society will enter an elderly society. Who will take care of the elderly? Who will produce? Who will do scientific research?
Pastor Wang Yi’s insight into population issues is twenty years ahead of our society. There is only one word that can accurately describe him: a prophet of the times. Pastor Wang Yi is not only a prophet of the church, but also a prophet of the whole Chinese society.
The Bible says, “A prophet has no honor in his own.” It is not an exaggeration to understand “his own country” here as “China.”
If the country’s decision-makers had listened to Pastor Wang Yi’s advice earlier, China would not have fallen into the current predicament. The decision-makers not only ignored Pastor Wang Yi’s advice, but also threw him into prison because he opposed the national policy! This will lead to China falling into even greater difficulties.
When I think of Pastor Wang Yi in prison, I am reminded of the verse: “How the mighty have fallen! The weapons of war have perished!”
