This must not be true everywhere in China. My neighbor is from China, moved here as an adult. She has a brother. She had not even heard of the One Child policy in China, I told her about it.
A little history. The world did not know about this until an American doctoral student, bumped into it as he was conducting research in some small Chinese villages in the early 90s. He was absolutely shocked. It was a secret program. The evidence is overwhelming including images, video, and victims being smuggled out of China.
What is happening in China right now is exactly what Obama would do if he could get away with it.
There are 'rules' for this and even though I've had it explained to me, I can't remember exactly what they are. I do know that when I was doing a training program in Beijing a few years ago, one of my translators told me a bit about it and in fact she and her husband were restricted to one child. One the other hand, one of the technical people who I worked with moved there from South Korea and she and her husband could have two children. Another couple I met originally lived in a rural district and it appeared to have some other level of restriction (I can't remember exactly what it was but I believe they were allowed to have at least two.) There are plenty of exemptions to the rule including entire ethnic populations. If one (or perhaps it is both) of the parents were from one child families, they were allowed to have more than one. There's another exemption that has to do with whether the firstborn is a boy or a girl, if a girl the couple is allowed to have a second child. There is another rule that has to do with whether the firstborn has some type of deformity.
No Chinese ever remember the Tienanmen massacre either