The CCP's thirty years of family-planning policy left behind a staggering blood debt, having slaughtered countless innocent young lives. The '100 Days Without a Child' campaign in Liaocheng, Shandong, is one notorious example.
The so-called '100 Days Without a Child' campaign refers to an order issued in 1991 by Zeng Zhaoqi, Party secretary of Guan County, and Bai Zhigang, Party secretary of Shen County, both in the Liaocheng region of Shandong, aiming to lower the birth rate that year: from May 1 to August 10, not a single child—whether a first or second birth, 'legal' or 'illegal'—was to be allowed to be born in the area, and all pregnancies were to be forcibly terminated.
It all began on April 26, 1991.
On that day, Zeng Zhaoqi, then Party secretary of Guan County, convened an enlarged meeting of the county Party committee, demanding that from May 1 to August 10, not a single child be born anywhere in the county.
The decision was made because Guan County ranked dead last in the province for family-planning compliance, and the county Party committee had received a formal warning. Zeng Zhaoqi resolved to turn the county from last place to first place within a single year, and so launched the '100 Days Without a Child' campaign. Zeng is said to have made a remark that is still remembered in Guan County to this day: 'If a single child is born during these hundred days, I'll call him father.'
After the '100 Days Without a Child' campaign began, banners and slogans were hung across every street and alley in Guan County: 'Better to end your family line than fail to reassure the Party,' 'A rope for hanging, a bottle for poison,' 'Better to abort than to give birth,' and 'Enforce the policy resolutely — extra children will absolutely not be allowed.'
Bai Zhigang, Party secretary of neighboring Shen County, unwilling to let his own county fall behind, immediately launched the identical policy.
During those three months, any pregnant woman — whether the pregnancy was within or outside the birth quota, a first child or a later one, however many months along, even a woman who had long struggled with infertility and finally conceived — was seized and forced to have an abortion. Makeshift shacks lined Guanyichun Road in Guan County, all of them filled with people who had been rounded up for forced abortion or induced labor. The county hospital could not keep up with the volume of procedures and had to send patients to hospitals in surrounding counties and cities. Many full-term babies were born alive during these induced deliveries and were then strangled to death or drowned on the spot. Guan County dug large pits to bury these pitiable children — innocent little lives that, without ever having known a single day of joy in this world, were cast into those grim, dark pits...
According to the recollection of a local township official:
'To ensure that not a single child was born in our township during these hundred days from May 1 to August 10, I was put in overall charge of the township, and each village's Party secretary was put in charge of his own village. We started with our own families, our own people, our own relatives — any pregnant woman, no matter the circumstances, was forced to abort. All previously issued birth permits were voided. When people asked, "What if the baby is already born?" our answer was: "If it's born, strangle it!"'
'I had every member of the family-planning enforcement squad put on police uniforms and carry weapons — standard-issue two-meter ropes and one-meter-forty clubs. Each was paid 10 yuan a day, at a time when our township head and Party secretary earned at most 130 yuan a month. Informants received a flat 5% commission, so a single tip usually earned over 100 yuan. In terms of political rewards, anyone who worked with enthusiasm was given priority for Party membership and priority for promotion to township cadre.'
'I "creatively" applied the famous "white cat, black cat" theory: whatever someone's background, whatever their history, whether or not they had a record of petty theft or shady dealings, as long as they could fulfill the family-planning quota, they were a "good comrade" and got promoted to an important post.'
'For major operations — demolishing houses, seizing people — we would usually bring in men from Jianwo township, eighty li away. Outsiders knew no one locally and felt no personal obligations, so they worked like wolves and tigers. So what if she's pregnant — we'd aim kicks straight at the belly, to spare ourselves the trouble of her being unwilling to abort. One kick, and soon there'd be a pool of blood on the ground; her chances of keeping the pregnancy would be next to nothing. Even if we'd let her try, once at the county hospital they'd just give her an induction injection anyway. Who would dare refuse a political assignment!'
Many families expecting a birth soon fled. Their homes were then torn down and their relatives seized — there were even cases of a mother being forced to slap her own daughter's father-in-law across the face. During the campaign, tractors regularly hauled villagers, seized because a family member had given birth, through the streets and townships to be publicly paraded, bound hand and foot with placards hung around their necks. Because it happened to be the season when the corn stalks had grown tall, some pregnant women, hunted down with nowhere left to hide, fled into the cornfields to give birth, then lived in makeshift shacks, too afraid to come out — and only in this way did they escape harm.
Records show that during the hundred days of the '100 Days Without a Child' campaign, tens of thousands of infants were killed, their bodies filling wells ten meters deep, while stray dogs were seen carrying infant corpses through the streets.