Worse than Mao
When hubris meets fear, the results are often catastrophic and irreversible
On December 21, 2025, a frail woman passed away in Beijing, just days shy of her 96th birthday. To the Chinese Communist Party, she was a “loyal fighter” and “outstanding leader.” To millions of ordinary Chinese, she was something far darker and sinister—worse, in many eyes, than even Chairman Mao.
Her name is Peng Peiyun (彭珮云). Between 1988 and 1998, she was in charge of China’s national family-planning agency, which enforced the nation’s notorious one-child policy.
The population control policy, like Marxism, were brainchild of Western liberal intellectuals. In 1968, Stanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich co-authored a popular book with his wife Anne, titled “The Population Bomb,” arguing that overpopulation would lead to widespread famine and environmental collapse as early as the 1970s.
To avoid these disasters, the Ehrlichs proposed, “We must rapidly bring the world population under control, reducing the growth rate to zero or making it negative. Conscious regulation of human numbers must be achieved.” The book generated worldwide fear, especially among policymakers.
In Communist China, however, Mao had celebrated large populations as a strategic asset. He argued that more people translated to more manpower, essential for realizing the Communist vision. Additionally, Mao saw a large population as a buffer against potential nuclear threats from the West. He famously remarked to a foreign visitor in 1957, “Atomic bombs could not kill all of us… What if they killed 300 million of us? We would still have many people left.”
In 1979, three years after Mao’s death, Chinese scientists and economists influenced by Ehrlich convinced CCP leaders to launch the “One-Child” policy, predicting China’s population could reach 4.26 billion by 2080 if left unchecked and would doom the nation. It’s important to note that the models used by Ehrlich and the Chinese scientists were fundamentally flawed, and none of their predictions turned out to be accurate. However, at the time, few questioned their models or underline assumptions.
To sidestep cultural resistance—where large families symbolized prosperity in Chinese culture—the “One-Child” policy was not initially legislated through the National People’s Congress. Instead, the central government sent an “open letter” to provincial governments. Enforcement was initially uneven, until Chinese leader Jiang Zemin appointed Peng to lead the National Population and Family Planning Commission in 1989, post-Tiananmen.
Peng introduced the infamous “one-vote veto” system, linking local officials’ career advancement to birth quotas. The result: widespread brutality in the name of compliance. Tactics included forced sterilizations of men and women, late-term abortions, and severe financial penalties for non-compliance. For those who wish to delve deeper into the grim realities of these enforcement methods, I highly recommend the Substack newsletter ““Human Rights in China,” which sheds light on some of the most heart-wrenching cases.
According to Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist who spearheaded the movement against China’s one-child policy and is now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Peng’s enforcement had affected women and unborn children on a massive scale:
“During her [Peng’s] tenure (1988-98), 110 million women received intrauterine devices, 41 million were sterilized and 110 million underwent abortions — often coerced. Overall fertility dropped from 2.3 births per woman in 1990 to 1.22 in 2000.”
The true number of babies murdered due to forced abortions remains unknown, alongside the countless mothers who suffered severe complications or mental health crises as a result of these traumatic experiences.
The Chinese government itself has acknowledged that the “One-Child” policy prevented an astounding 400 million births. For her “success,” Peng was rewarded with a promotion to vice chair of the National People’s Congress and chair of the All-China Women’s Federation.
Human Rights China concludes,
“In its scale & human cost, the one-child policy stands alongside the Great Famine as one of the gravest state-engineered catastrophes implemented by the CCP.” Peng was indisputably one of the worst mass-murders in Chinese history, or in human history, next to Mao. No wonder after Peng’s death was announced, one of the viral social media posts in China says, “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there in the afterlife.”
Peng famously argued that the “One-Child” policy should remain in effect for at least 100 years. However, by 2015, the CCP recognized that it was facing a population decline rather than an overpopulation crisis. China now has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, and as the life expectancy improves, the country is set to age before it becomes wealthier. An older, shrinking population with fewer workers, decreased productivity, and increased demands for healthcare and social services poses significant challenges to the ambitions of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The nervous CCP attempted to reverse the decline in population by first implementing a “two-child policy” in 2016, which was later expanded to a “three-child policy” in 2021. Many local governments made a significant shift in their approach: instead of forced abortion or imposing hefty fines on couples who tried to have more than one child, they began offering financial rewards to encourage young people to marry and have more children.
Despite these efforts, a baby boom has not materialized. In 2023, China’s total population decreased by more than 2 million, and India surpassed China as the world’s most populous country. Between 2016 and 2023, birth rates in China fell by more than 50%.
In 2025, ten years after the end of the “One-Child” policy, the number of births in China dropped below 9 million for the first time. Yi Fuxian predicts that this figure could fall below 8 million, possibly reaching around 7.3 million this year. It appears that, despite government incentives, China’s population decline may be becoming irreversible.
China’s population decline stems from various factors, but the most significant is the enduring impact of the “One-Child” policy. This policy has created a stark gender imbalance, as there are not enough women of child-bearing age due to the years of infanticide that disproportionately targeted girls.
Furthermore, the brutal enforcement tactics that lasted for over two decades have left deep psychological wounds in society. A sudden policy shift cannot erase the emotional and cultural scars inflicted over such a long time. Ultimately, reproduction is a personal and complex experience that the government, no matter how powerful, cannot simply dictate.
There is a vital lesson for us in the West: be cautious about making life and policy decisions based solely on scientific models. Scientists, being human, are not infallible and that models—especially those counting on human behavior as input—can yield unreliable results.
For over fifty years, we’ve witnessed eco-apocalyptic predictions—ranging from Ehrlich’s forecasts of impending famine to the ice-age warnings of the 1970s and countless climate deadlines—that have repeatedly missed the mark. Nonetheless, fear continues to shape policy: models become sacred, dissent is silenced, and governments overestimate their ability to steer human behavior. The result? Policies founded on these alarmist scenarios have crippled economic activities, escalated living costs, and diminished the quality of life for numerous individuals.
Consider the recent example from the COVID-19 pandemic: Professor Neil Ferguson’s alarming forecast suggested infections could hit 100,000 a day, prompting the UK government to implement strict lockdowns, inflicting profound harm on individuals and society as a whole. When the reality did not match Ferguson’s projection, his team blamed the public for failing to act according to the model’s assumptions.
The dark history of the “One-Child” policy and our own responses to climate and Covid19 should serve as stark reminder: We must cultivate the humility to accept that no powerful government or cadre of brilliant scientists can fully dictate human behavior or control the complexities of life. When hubris meets fear, the results are often catastrophic—and irreversible. The ghosts of those never born still whisper the cost. May we listen before we repeat the mistake.