--- title: Last Week Tonight Looks at China's One-Child Policy description: To mark 70 years of China's communist government, TV host John Oliver looked back at China's one-child policy, which ended in 2015. canonical: https://time.com/5692776/john-oliver-china-70th-anniversary-last-week-tonight/ author: Melissa Locker article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-10-07T08:40:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:47:03.420Z og:title: John Oliver Looks at China's One-Child Policy og:description: 'Last Week Tonight' looks at the controversial policy that China ended in 2015 og:url: https://time.com/5692776/john-oliver-china-70th-anniversary-last-week-tonight/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: John Oliver Looks at China's One-Child Policy twitter:description: 'Last Week Tonight' looks at the controversial policy that China ended in 2015 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # John Oliver Looks Back at China's One Child Policy on _Last Week Tonight_ > Sponsored content. 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The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ## Video: A Legacy of China's Strict Family Planning Rules [Watch (HLS stream): A Legacy of China's Strict Family Planning Rules](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7XUn9ScS.m3u8) (15:10)  _Published 2016-12-12. This short documentary focuses on the lives of children who were born outside of China's strict family planning rules. There are 13 million such people in China today._ by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Oct 7, 2019 8:40 AM UTC by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Oct 7, 2019 8:40 AM UTC This week on _Last Week Tonight_, John Oliver turned his attention to China, “the country that is, not the thing you fill a cabinet with when you run out of human needs.” The Communist Party recently celebrated its [70th anniversary](https://time.com/5689635/china-communist-party-seventy-years-anniversary-parade/) in power so Oliver decided to look back at its one-child policy, which China made the historic decision to [end in 2015.](https://time.com/4098745/china-one-child-policy-rights/) According to Oliver, the one-child policy took a massive effort at national and local level and included forced sterilizations and abortions as well as incessant propaganda. Much of the messaging centered on the suggestion that people have fewer children of higher quality, which Oliver notes is not how children work. Under the one-child policy, Chinese citizens who had a second child could not register the birth of the child without paying a massive fine. The result is 6.5 million Chinese with no official status, rendering many of them unable to marry or work. Oliver says it’s like someone is “a ghost without the fun parts of being a ghost like rattling chains, summoning cold winds, or making terrible ceramics while having sex with Demi Moore.” But now, as China faces an aging and shrinking population and a declining birth rate, the government has enacted a [two-child policy](https://time.com/5379947/two-child-policy-end-china/) complete with a new wave of propaganda. “I haven’t seen a messaging turn around that abrupt since Subway changed their slogan from ‘eat fresh’ to ‘[forget that pedophile](https://time.com/4477512/jared-fogle-subway-civil-suit-child-porn/)’,” Oliver joked. 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