There’s a considerable amount of restraint in the story’s telling.... Precisely because of its unflinching grimness, One Child is one of the most successful critiques of a broken system.

This isn't an easy movie to watch, but even at its most bleak, the scenes between the long-estranged mother and daughter are beyond poignant as they find common purpose.

Scenes of Mei trying to reconnect with her past has a few clever touches.... But it also has enough clunky dialogue, poor production values, and sluggish pacing to alienate viewers, too. [5 Dec 2014, p.77]

If it’s a flawed exploration of the old nature-vs.-nurture debate, the players and Mei’s predicament consistently make it interesting.

One Child spends too much time running in place--which may reflect China’s inert bureaucracy, but falls short of riveting viewing.

For all its clear outrage, One Child presents absolutely zero challenging ideas of what to do in reaction to these sort of crimes against humanity, other than to ostensibly deal with it.

Both the writing and the directing fall short in One Child, leaving good actors to work with material that’s mostly not there and viewers reminded of the fact that good intentions are not always enough.

Well, first of all, the whole premise for the program is dead wrong. The idea that in China you're only allowed to have one child is not based on any reality. The fact is, you can have more than one child, in fact, you can have as many as you choose. I have a friend in China that has 2 young kids. He also has 3 sisters. His wife has a brother. His parents both have brothers and sisters. They aren't rich and they aren't living on some remote island farm. In fact, they live in Guangdong - the same region as this movie takes place. His parents are from Guangzhou, the very same city in this fabricated story. Its nothing but more cliche typical China bashing. There is far more complexity to the reality of the situation in China today than this program would have viewers believing (as is evident in the reviews). The freedom available to Chinese citizens today, the peaceful prosperity and quality of life (etc.) is something we in the west should take note of and learn from. Take a look at what is happening in our own backyards before pointing fingers I say. Perhaps start with the government sanctioned-legal, pre-teen American slave-farming industry? Yeah, no tv studio wants to touch that one huh. I gave it a "0" because its fake and in being fake a bad story with absolutely no true life redeeming quality whatsoever.