Infamously instituted in 1980, China's one-child policy actually ended pretty recently in 2015. There have been a slew of problems that have come to the forefront of the nation's stage that have been brewing over the years, due to the fact that an entire generation of people entered the world under this policy.

The first problem that has arisen is the presence of "ghost" second children, or the almost 6.5 million children who entered adulthood without any official citizenship status because they were born outside family planning rules and there was a hefty fine for breaking the rule. In fact, many children were often treated as a financial burden by their families as a result of the fine, causing long-lasting emotional and mental trauma throughout their lives.

China also has an aging and shrinking population with a declining birth rate, leaving many offspring who now have to care for their grandparents and parents alone. Calling this the '4-2-1' problem, children who do not have any siblings are the only ones left to take care of not only two parents, but also, four grandparents. This also implies that the working class is currently much smaller than it should be, which is concerning given that the workforce has to expend extra resources caring for the elderly in addition to having to heighten their own productivity in the workplace.

One of the more famous, however insidious, repercussions of the policy is the immense gender gap China now faces. 34 million more men than women, meaning men who want to marry or have a partner may not be able to have one. So much so, that China has a new wave of dating services and "sex dolls" to help circumvent the problem. This is also impairing economic growth and productivity, with the shortage making it harder to defend women's rights and equal pay.

What's more is that forced abortions and sterilizations seemed to be the norm during the one-child years. This practice caused countless mothers to be estranged from their families, or be unable to have a child because their husbands already had a child from a previous marriage.

"One Child Nation" filmmaker Nanfu Wang, who is on a watch list in her homeland of China for speaking out, says: "I remember neighbors or people living in the village, they would be talking about going to get a sterilization like going to shop, going to get groceries, using the terms so common[ly] to the extent that I forgot, I didn't know what sterilization meant until later, now that I am a woman and I am a mother, and suddenly the terms all became much more brutal to me."