I was the second child in my family born during the one child policy. They tried to force an abortion on my mother. She was from a village and fled to a city and hide. Once I was born, they couldn’t justify killing a child that has already been born, so they let me live, but my parents have to pay tens of thousands of RMB (¥) and that took several years to pay off. And if you don’t pay that, they deny issuing a birth certificate, essentally you don’t legally exist if your parents couldn’t pay the fine. But they eventually did and got all the documents.
We left China when I was still in elementary school. My mother told me about this when I was a kid and I didn’t really understand what she meant. Then when I was around highschool age, I kinda had an existential crisis. I almost never had a chance to exist because of some crazy government policy.
Most people hate the CCP because of authoritarianism, but for me, it not just the authoritarianism, I have a personal grudge against the CCP.