“[The Chinese government will] fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an aging population”, the CPC said in a communiqué after the fifth plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee.
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State news agency Xinhua announced the news in a surprise “China abandons one-child policy” tweet Thursday afternoon.
China, which has the world’s largest population at 1.4 billion people, introduced the one-child policy in 1979 as a temporary measure to curb a then-surging population and limit the demands for water and other resources.
The policy was later relaxed to any couples could have a second child if they both were the only children of their parents.
After almost 40 years, China is lifting its one-child policy and will now allow couples to have two children.
“Couples that have two children could still be subjected to coercive and intrusive forms of contraception, and even forced abortions – which amount to torture”, William Nee, China researcher, pointed out. Sometimes the second or third child was penalized and could not be registered, so he or she could not go to school.
“China has already begun to feel an unfolding crisis in terms of its population change”, Wang Feng, a professor at Fudan University and a leading demographic expert on China, told McKenzie earlier this year. It didn’t provide a time frame or any other details. A second revision in 2013 allowed urban couples to have a second if either parent was an only child.
A few scholars say the government faces many hurdles in abolishing family planning policies, one of which is millions of government officials and employees who have been involved in more than 30 years of enforcement would probably be out of work. Ethnic minorities are also allowed more than one child. Many of those for whom the rule change could make a difference have moved on with their lives.
For the first time in decades the working age population fell in 2012, and China, the world’s most populous nation, could be the first country in the world to get old before it gets rich.
A Chinese government census report released in April 2011 recorded a mainland Chinese population of 1.34 billion people.
In a group called “Support for older mothers who want a second child” on WeChat, a messaging app popular in China, many women hailed the new rule.
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Li Bin, head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that the policy reversal follows the changes in population growth.
