Years later I realized that I belonged to the first generation of China’s strict one-child family planning policy, which started in the late 1970s and remained largely intact until the ruling Communist Party chose to scrap it Thursday to allow married couples nationwide to have two children.
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China’s one child policy of 35 years has been abandoned.
The policy led to sex-selective abortions or infanticide targeting girls, because of a centuries-old social preference for boys. Su Weihua, the mother of an eight-year-old daughter in the southern city of in Guangzhou, said she was making plans to become pregnant next year.
Many couples simply can’t afford to have another child. The official Xinhua News Agency said the proposal must be approved by the top legislature before it is enacted, which is essentially a formality. It gave no indication of when that would happen.
Finally, the government announce this week that it will be switching to a “Two Child” policy, to combat another foreseen demographic challenge: an aging population and a shrinking workforce.
Many people simply welcomed Beijing’s change of policy.
In 2013, China relaxed the one-child rule, allowing families to have a second child if one parent was an only child.
Numerous problems created by the One Child policy were eventually answered with reforms (they didn’t always work).
Xinhua’s commentary on Friday said that the decision followed a consensus that had been reached by team of experts.
Though there were exceptions to the policy, most couples who violated it faced punishment, from fines and the loss of employment to forced abortions.
Many who wanted more than one child, especially those with means, found a way around the official rules, such as by having babies overseas or paying fines to have their children registered with the government. “It’s unfortunate it took so long to get there, but hopefully this will improve the state of health for Chinese citizens, their economy, and – quite frankly – their family lives”. This year, the country recorded a GDP growth of just 6.9 percent in its third quarter, a 0.5 percent decrease from 7.4 percent in 2014, and the lowest since the 90’s during the global financial crisis.
Investors were quick to trade on the news, pushing up shares of toy makers and other childcare-related stocks in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
In 2013, a few young Chinese adults born under the nation’s one-child policy told CNS they were planning their families based on personal experience. Despite the lift, it’s still possible that couples would not add one more into their brood as many are concerned about the rising costs of child rearing.
“I think it’s more an attempt to show that the regime cares more for people, it’s an attempt to establish a better relationship between the Communist Party and particularly the younger, urban middle class, who are the people who the Communist Party needs to keep the allegiance and the loyalty of, and there are signs that that relationship’s been fraying”. They were given the right to opt for a second child. China, the world’s most populous nation, had 1.37 billion people at the end of previous year.
Cai Yong, a professor at the University of North Carolina and an expert in Chinese demography, says he is pessimistic about the policy change because it came a decade too late, reports The Wall Street Journal.
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The government credits the one-child policy with preventing 400 million births and helping lift countless families out of poverty by easing the strain on the country’s limited resources.
