China had one of Asia’s highest median ages at 37.3 years in 2014, and that could rise to 40 by 2025, according to Euromonitor worldwide, a research firm. Historically and economically speaking, the argument was spot on.
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Renowned director Zhang Yimou paid a US$1.2 million fine for having three extra children.
“It takes a lot of energy to take care of a child, and you want to make sure the child will have a good future”, she said. “This is a challenge both for the government and society, which not only have to provide more such services but also better services to an increasingly demanding public”. “If China is serious about respecting human rights, the government should immediately end such invasive and punitive controls over people’s decisions to plan families and have children”.
“This is a technical change, a policy change, rather than a political change”, said Joseph Cheng, a retired political scientist formerly at the City University of Hong Kong.
Practically, there have also been problems because boys are seen as the preferred “one child” and there are now too many men compared with women in the country.
It will now allow all couples to now have two children – effectively ending its decades-old “one child policy”. There is another danger created by the one child policy which is the stark gender imbalance in China.
There are tens of millions of couples who have only one child and stand to qualify under the new rule but not many are grabbing the opportunity.
A statement that the Central Committee, the party’s nexus of national power, provided through the official Xinhua News Agency did not say when the change will come into effect.
“Even though they’re hoping to increase their fertility, they’re still going to have a substantial population aging – and this is going to happen even with the increase in fertility”.
Fellow Weibo user “Big Forehead Qianqian” wrote: “Speaking of a second child, though it sounds like a plan too far away for me, I don’t think I’ll have one”.
The working-age population shrank previous year for the first time in two decades and the cohort of senior citizens is projected to grow rapidly.
“It won’t have any impact on the issue of the aging society, but it will change the character of many young families”, Wang said.
The change is part of the Communist Party’s relentless, gradual policy changes that are aimed at making China rich while retaining the party’s monopoly on power. Indeed, areas in which two children now are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of females.
The mere demand by protesting students in 1989 for democracy resulted in them being crushed (in many cases literally by tanks) and hundreds of deaths.
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Concerns over rising social costs and falling worker numbers had lead to relaxations in a few provinces, and formal relaxation in national rules occurring two years ago, with this major change to the policy being rumoured for several months.
