The government has gradually been loosening its one-child policy, providing more exceptions to family-size regulations, but that has not halted the decline in the country’s working population.
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Chairman Deng Xiaoping enacted the policy in 1979 as a measure aimed at population control, but the hotly contested law had created a series of gender imbalances and ultimately proved counterproductive for the new phase of social and economic development of the Asian giant.
The 18th CPC Central Committee concluded its fifth plenary session on Thursday after reviewing proposals for the country’s national economic and social development from 2016-2020. According to Xinhua News, the policy limited urban couples to one child and allowed for rural couples to have two.
But here’s the really scary thing for China: it’s not obvious that ending the one-child policy will solve its demographic crisis.
It also mentioned a desire to promote balanced population growth, stick to the basic state policy of family planning and enhance population growth strategy.
China on Thursday announced that it is abolishing the one-child policy, enabling all couples to have two children.
Originally envisioned as a way to prevent the nation’s population from outstripping resources, the policy instead became something that threatened the nation’s growth in the coming decades, and leaders partially loosened the rule in 2013.
“The abolition of the one-child policy is unlikely to have a big near term impact on the economy”, said Chang Liu of Capital Economics. As of June, only 1.5 million of the 11 million eligible couples had applied for second child.
The decision to allow couples to bear two children comes with no riders, confirmed the committee.
The policy is unlike any other in the world in that it requires all women to obtain a birth permit before becoming pregnant and children of unwed mothers are subjected to abortions. After the previous relaxation was introduced in 2013, the government expected that 2m couples would try for a second child under the new rules within the first year. Most citizens openly opposed the mandate at first, forcing local officials to resort to abortions, heavy fines, loss of employment and forced sterilization.
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Beijing can do nothing to stop the ageing of its population, but it can potentially arrest the increase in its dependency ratio by encouraging couples to have more children.
