China's Child
Imagine a city the size of Liverpool where nobody has had a second child for three years; where nobody gets pregnant without official permission; where a second baby has no legal identity and can lose you your job, and where neighbours and workmates are officially encouraged to report any unauthorised pregnancy.
Changzhou, an industrial town near Shanghai, is such a place. It's one of the most successful examples of China's policy, announced in 1980, that ' because of the coming over-population crisis, each couple will henceforth only be allowed a single child '.
How do the Chinese enforce such a severe policy? How do they present it to the people as acceptable, even desirable? And what happens when, despite pressures, a woman becomes pregnant for the second time?
This film traces the personal and detailed events in Changzhou during two weeks last March, following the factory birth control workers, the ' Granny Police' and the local families, as they struggle to apply - or in some cases, to get round - the ' one child policy'. Narrated by PAUL VAUGHAN
Film editor RODERICK LONGHURST Horizon editor GRAHAM MASSEY
Written and directed by EDWARD GOLDWYN