Mao and his successors tried to break down the traditional cultural mores of the Chinese people in the decades after the Communist takeover of China in 1949. In an attempt to bring the nation forward economically, the Communists have encouraged -- and at times required and enforced -- single child families. This has managed to change the family dynamic quite seriously.

In fact, so seriously that the very pattern of filial piety that the Communists set out to destroy may now be legislated by the same Communists!

Under a proposal submitted last Monday by the Civil Affairs Ministry to China’s State Council, adult children would be required by law to regularly visit their elderly parents. If they do not, parents can sue them.

“Before, the courts did not accept this kind of lawsuit,” Wu Ming, a deputy inspector for the ministry, told The Legal Evening News this month. “But from now on, they will have to open up a case.”

Some argue this law may not pass, while others are not so sure. But the point is that by breaking the back of the traditional Chinese family -- a large, multi-generational unit -- the Communists ahve created the problem of abandoned elderly. And that, my friend, is what we call the law of unintended consequences in action.