Single-Child Kiddie Rides and Single-Child Video Games in China

When I was in Hengyang, Hunan province, last year, two kiddie rides resembling multiple-child playground equipment made me think of China's one-child policy.

It is easy to find examples of single-child rides in other countries, including the U.S., though. So while a certain symbolism can be seen, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions directly tying the rides to the one-child policy.

I thought of these rides because of recent news about the one-child policy's impact on fun in another area:

Some Chinese officials have apparently extended the nation’s one-child policy to include completely imaginary virtual character in videogames, or so said a gaming-company chief executive Thursday.

“The regulators require the birth system in our games to meet the regulations of birth-control policies, which means if players have a second child in the game, we must impose virtual social-compensation fees on them,” Xu Youzhen, CEO of Guangzhou-based Duoyi Network Technology, wrote on his official microblog account.

For more about why one can't freely have multiple children or fight a giant panda in a Chinese video game, read Linda He's article on MarketWatch here.