A documentary that exposes excessive government control of private lives in China: One Child Nation

The documentary film One Child Nation (2019, directors Nanfu Wang & Lynn Zhang) starts off just strange (at least to American viewers) and becomes increasingly horrifying and terrifying. It's a look at the policy adopted by China about 35 years ago to encourage couples to have on child only - as the country feared a shortage of resources and huge economic consequences if the population grew rapidly. Nothing in and of itself bad for a nation to adopt such a goal, though to Americans it would, and does, feel like too much state intrusion into private, personal lives of others. That said, the government at first supported the policy through massive propaganda: slogans pained on buildings and road signage (not too different from what we see in the U.S. today about auto safety and drunken driving), then with many to us weird songs and dances - and then the story becomes much stranger, as the government imposes severe penalties on families that have a 2nd child - and w/ the government eventually adopting policies that led to infanticide and forced sterilization (of women, of course). the directors travel to China to meet w/ people in Wang's family (she now lives in the U.S.) and in her home town or village to see what these people say in reflecting back on the policy (rescinded a few years ago, as the population has become stable). We see people who were responsible for thousands of infant deaths and sterilizations of thousands of women lamenting: What could we do? It was state policy. Others have reacted by leading a life of penance, supporting family planning and medical clinics. Then, strangest of all, they filmmakers report on the adoption industry that arose during this era: People procuring in all ways imaginable abandoned babies, selling them to state-run orphanages, which in turn sold the infants to foreigners eager to adopt children - so the state looked away from this criminal behavior because everyone was making money. (Much of this was uncovered by a reporter now living in Hong Kong.) Toward the end, the film loses a bit of its steam as they filmmakers focus on an organization in Utah trying to learn the true origin of many U.S.-adopted babies and to reunite some with their Chinese families; unfortunately, at this point none has been reunited, so the film is missing its final big punch (the movie from a few years back, Twinsters, does show this kind of surprise discovery and reunion of twin sisters, born in Korea and raised apart in the U.S.). All told, though, though it break no new cinematic ground, One Child Nation is worth watching for its expose of governmental control of the lives of people - even now, under the current "2-child" family movement in China.