Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Chief Scott Tong will bring to a close his 3-year posting in China next week with a series about the controversial policy that restricts many Chinese families to having no more than one child. The series will run on Marketplace and Marketplace Morning Report from Monday, June 21 to Friday June 25 with additional content featured on the website.
Throughout the week, Marketplace will look at how the policy came into being 30 years ago and how it evolved. It will examine the highly-programmed lives of these "Little Emperors" and the way in which businesses market to them and will ask whether Chinese citizens actually want bigger families in a rapidly urbanizing and often materialistic society. It will look at the economic repercussions of the policy in terms of future labor shortages and ask whether China's days as the cheap-labor "factory of the world" are numbered. Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal will also discuss the viability of the policy with Scott.
On Tuesday, June 22, Marketplace Morning Report will talk with Scott about the difficult transition faced by these sometimes pampered children who must go on to face the tough and highly competitive Chinese workplace.
During the week, Marketplace will showcase a multimedia package that includes an audio slide show and photographs of many of the people featured in the radio reports. There will also be a quiz about the One Child Policy and a series of blog posts from Scott Tong and Marketplace Shanghai Researcher, Cecelia Chen.
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