A Growing and Necessary Field for the Underserved Disabled Community
On my own university campus in China, I was lucky that the construction plan more or less enforced the building codes necessitated by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991 due to the university’s connection with Duke University in the US. For a month and a half of my freshman year, I was limited to a wheelchair and fully appreciated the ramps and sliding doors, no matter how steep or slow they may have been. But my university was an abnormality in China. Rarely are buildings built or policies made to encompass the disabled community that numbers close to 100 million.
The disabled community in China, from my own experience, is largely confined to dilapidated group homes or alleyways. In my many instances of pushing through crowds of people in Shanghai, Beijing, or Guangzhou, I rarely encountered people with noticeable disabilities on the city streets. Buildings were often divided into narrow hallways and elevators down to metro stations were tucked far, far away, providing great inconveniences. Never once did I witness a person in a wheelchair on any form of public transportation, whether it be the city buses, the metros, or China’s network of bullet trains. How can that be? How can I, in a country that has nearly 100 million people with disabilities (about 1 in 16), not have seen one person with a physical disability?
For starters, based on the data of an article (https://www.economist.com/china/2021/03/18/campaigners-in-china-struggle-to-improve-the-lot-of-the-disabled) appearing in The Economist in March 2021, three in four people with disabilities in China live in poor, rural areas. The disabled community faces generations’ worth of prejudice; from it being decreed that couples who birth a child with a disability can have a second- a policy that essentially deemed a child with a disability as having less value- to the fact that primary schools are still largely segregated between able-bodied children and children with disabilities. Even more worrying, 90% of business in the employment sector would prefer to pay a fee as opposed to hire the requisite 1.5% of positions out to people with disabilities.
So, what is being done to alleviate these prejudices that are written into policy all around China?
Progress began a little over three decades ago with the adoption of a bill that ushered in China’s first law protecting people with disabilities. In the next two decades that followed, education rates for children with disabilities went from less than 66% to 95% and public discrimination against people with disabilities decreased significantly. Children with disabilities are now allowed reasonable accommodation on the zhongkao and gaokao, the two most important exams in the Chinese education system. In 2008, China ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a document that the US still hasn’t ratified themselves.
Even more encouraging, the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector in China, historically oppressed by the government, has begun to grow in the area of disability advocacy with the encouragement of local government officials. One such example is the Shenzhen Autism Society that started a program to help participants go to the dentist.
China is slowly beginning to undo generations of discrimination towards the disabled community, a necessary step if the country wants to continue to increase the quality of living for all of its citizens. But more work is needed. More policies in education, transportation, and employment are needed to equalize the society. Perhaps the role of NGOs will have a greater impact reaching into the future in the instance of disability advocacy.
Written by Ryan Trombly
Ryan Trombly was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy when she was eighteen months old. The disability causes right-side hemiparesis that affects the entire right side of her body, weakening her muscles and limiting her mobility in everyday activities. Despite this, Ryan has strived to live a normal, independent life without any barriers and hopes to use her voice to advocate for the disabled community.
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