A Mountain of Debt
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2012
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Damian Grammaticas in China on how accounts of forced abortions from around the country have fuelled a debate on a once-taboo subject: the state's One Child only policy. Paul Mason tells how Spain's third city Valencia is being buried under a mountain of debt. Now the chemists are running out of prescription drugs. Gabriel Gatehouse is in Kenya where questions are being asked about an outbreak of factional violence. Is it simply a matter of local feuding or should national politicians shoulder some of the blame? Steve Rozenberg's been to meet the hardline president of Chechnya and ask him questions about the Islamicisation of his Russian republic. And Georgia Paterson Dargham chronicles how Beirut is increasingly feeling the effects of the Syrian conflict. She tells us how some residents in the Lebanese capital are wondering: has the time now come to get out?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a download from the BBC, this is from our own correspondent. |
| 0:04.6 | You can hear the version of the program we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site |
| 0:08.9 | at BBC online. |
| 0:10.8 | But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Adi. |
| 0:16.0 | Today public outrage brings a once taboo subject out into the open in China. |
| 0:22.0 | A budget's being prepared to tackle Spain's huge mountain of debt. |
| 0:26.7 | In Valencia, it's meant chemists running out of prescription drugs. |
| 0:31.6 | There have been murderous clashes in Kenya and suggestions that politicians |
| 0:35.9 | keen for votes may be behind the violence. And the lights have been going out in the |
| 0:41.2 | Lebanese capital Beirut, but still there's time it seems for |
| 0:45.4 | one more shopping spree. |
| 0:48.6 | A subject which few Chinese dared to question is now being discussed quite openly all around the country. |
| 0:55.0 | It's the notorious One Child Policy, under which most families are restricted in the number |
| 1:00.0 | of children they can have. |
| 1:02.3 | Many are now saying it's out of date and should be scrapped. |
| 1:05.6 | The Chinese birth rate has been falling steadily in recent years. In the 1980s there were |
| 1:11.1 | 25 million births a year. Today that figure driven down by the policy |
| 1:16.2 | stands at just 15 million. Unless the rules are relaxed, some experts believe the |
| 1:21.9 | population will fall into an irreversible decline. |
| 1:25.0 | Damien Grammaticus tells us many Chinese people have been outraged by the graphic accounts of women who were forced by family planning officials to have abortions. |
| 1:36.7 | As she talks, Huang Jirping has an empty, far away look in her eyes. |
| 1:42.2 | They surrounded our house, 20 people, they hammered on the |
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