Give me a Red Tape 你给我个胶带

Installation, 2026

China recorded more than 200 million abortions linked to the enforcement of the one-child policy (1979–2015). An estimated 30 million were sex-selective abortions, primarily targeting female fetuses, shaped by strict family-planning policies and longstanding son preference. Today, China faces the opposite crisis: collapsing birth rates, a rapidly aging population, and a shrinking workforce that threatens long-term economic growth. In response, the state now aggressively promotes three-child families.

I transformed China’s reproductive propaganda slogans into rolls of red tape. Over decades, these slogans shifted alongside the state’s demographic priorities: from the coercive violence of the one-child policy to today’s intense pressure to produce more children. A woman’s uterus may belong to her body, yet what it carries is repeatedly made to serve national plans, economic forecasts, and population targets. The complex joy, grief, pain, and labor of reproduction are flattened into policy, numbers, and state ambition.

In Chinese, the word for tape (胶带 jiāodài) sounds like the word for an explanation or an account (交代 jiāodài). The phrase "Give me a roll of tape" echoes the demand: "Give me an explanation." This red tape physically and metaphorically binds the individual to the state. It asks: who is given an account for this irreversible intrusion?

The slogans on the tape include:

• Have only one child, and the government will support your old age 只生一个好 政府帮养老 vs. Having three children is best, so you won’t need the state to support your old age 三个孩子就是好 不用国家来养老

• If one person has an extra birth, the whole village gets sterilized 一人超生 全村结扎 vs. If one person refuses to have more children, the whole village gets artificial insemination 一人拒绝多生 全村人工授精

• Fewer births, better births, a lifetime of happiness 少生优生 幸福一生 vs. Have children early and have more, a lifetime of happiness 早生多生 幸福一生

• Abort it, miscarry it, just don’t give birth to it 引下来 流下来 就是不能生下来 vs. Reward the second child, punish the first; arrest the child-free and the infertile 二胎奖 一胎罚 丁克不育都该抓

• Whoever has an unauthorized birth will have their family destroyed 谁超生叫谁倾家荡产 谁超生叫谁家破人亡 vs. If you won’t reproduce, then pay tax 不交配 就交税