For much of the last 45 years, the Chinese government imposed a one-child policy that forced parents to have fewer kids than they desired, and to resort to abortion or feticide if a subsequent child was conceived by accident. That same government has cracked down on youth-led pro-democracy protests, both at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and in Hong Kong more recently. It shut down whole cities in a failed effort to contain COVID, keeping Shanghai’s citizens, including millions of children, mostly shut inside, sometimes with little food available, for weeks on end. And it tries to lock dissent and embarrasing information out of the internet, so that Chinese citizens, young and old alike, won’t learn about the vile acts that the government has committed—or is currently committing.
But apparently it makes a “good co-parent,” or so fashion designer Heather Kaye claims in a New York Times op-ed. Kaye, an American who raised two daughters in Shanghai, lauds the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its strict controls on internet access and time spent playing video games. This “heavy censorship,” she writes, creates “a kid-friendly internet.” She adds that “the tight control of the Communist Party surveillance state results in its own kind of freedom,” in the form of safe, largely crime-free streets where children can wander.
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