From the BBC:
“China allows three children
in major policy shift”
China has announced that it will
allow couples to have up to three children, after census data showed a steep
decline in birth rates. China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in
2016, replacing it with a two-child limit which has failed to lead to a
sustained upsurge in births. The cost of raising children in cities has
deterred many Chinese couples. The latest move was approved by President Xi
Jinping at a meeting of top Communist Party officials. It will come with
"supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's
population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with
an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human
resources", according to Xinhua news agency. But human rights organisation
Amnesty International said the policy, like its predecessors, was still a
violation of sexual and reproductive rights. "Governments have no business
regulating how many children people have. Rather than 'optimising' its birth
policy, China should instead respect people's life choices and end any invasive
and punitive controls over people's family planning decisions," said the
group's China team head, Joshua Rosenzweig. "If relaxing the birth policy
was effective, the current two-child policy should have proven to be effective
too," Hao Zhou, a senior economist at Commerzbank, told Reuters news
agency. "But who wants to have three kids? Young people could have two
kids at most. The fundamental issue is living costs are too high and life
pressures are too huge."
Analysis box by Stephen
McDonell, China correspondent On a rainy, bleak day in Beijing I was out
buying a coffee when the news broke. People started looking down at their
phones as they beeped and whirred with the headline flashing across their
screens - China to allow couples to have three children. This is big
news in a country which didn't start suddenly producing more babies when the
one-child policy eased off to two. In fact, many are asking how a
three-child policy might mean more children when the two-child version didn't
and why birth restrictions have remained here at all given the demographic
trend. Very good questions. One thought is that, among those
prepared to have two children, at least some parents will have three. However,
I have interviewed many young Chinese couples about this subject and it is hard
to find those who want bigger families these days. Generations of
Chinese people have lived without siblings and are used to small families -
affluence has meant less need for multiple children to become family-supporting
workers, and young professionals say they'd rather give one child more
advantages than spread their income among several kids.
What did the census say? The
census, released this month, showed that around 12 million babies were born
last year - a significant decrease from the 18 million in 2016, and the lowest
number of births recorded since the 1960s. The census was conducted in
late 2020 - some seven million census takers had gone door to door to collect
information from households. Given the sheer number of people surveyed,
it is considered the most comprehensive resource on China's population, which
is important for future planning. It was widely expected after the
census data results were released that China would relax its family policy
rules.
'Too many big pressures' China's
leading media are giving a lot of fanfare to the "three-child
policy". Newspaper People's Daily, broadcaster CCTV and news agency
Xinhua are all posting happy cartoon images of children today on their social
media pages and saying that the new policy has "arrived". It
is already the top talking point on popular social network Sina Weibo - posts
mentioning the new policy have already racked up tens of thousands of views,
and hundreds of thousands of comments. More than 180,000 users have
commented on Xinhua's upbeat post, and the ones with the most likes do not look
upon the policy kindly. "There are too many big pressures in life
at the moment," one user says, "Young people are not willing to have
kids." Many talk about modern day "workplace dilemmas"
for people leaving on maternity/paternity leave and there not being even "the
most basic reproductive benefits". And with a shrinking labour
market, young Chinese people today accept that they have to work longer hours.
Overtime and overwork are endemic. More women meanwhile are choosing to
pursue further education and employment, rather than settle down early to start
a family.
What were China's previous
policies? The government's move in 2016 to allow couples to have two
children failed to reverse the country's falling birth rate despite a two-year
increase immediately afterwards. Yue Su, principal economist from The
Economist Intelligence Unit, said: "While the second-child policy had a
positive impact on the birth rate, it proved short-term in nature." China's
population trends have over the years been largely shaped by the one-child
policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth. Families
that violated the rules faced fines, loss of employment and sometimes forced
abortions. The one-child policy also led to a severe gender imbalance in
the country. The traditional preference for male children led to large numbers
of girls being abandoned or placed in orphanages, or cases of sex-selective
abortions or even female infanticide. "This poses problems for the
marriage market, especially for men with less socioeconomic resources," Dr
Mu Zheng, from the National University of Singapore's sociology department,
said.
Can China lift birth
restrictions entirely? Ahead of China's latest census, experts had
speculated that birth restrictions might be lifted entirely - though it appears
as though China is treading cautiously. But others said that such a move
could potentially lead to "other problems" - pointing out the huge
disparity between city dwellers and rural people. As much as women
living in expensive cities such as Beijing and Shanghai may wish to delay or
avoid childbirth, those in the countryside are likely to still follow tradition
and want large families, they say. "If we free up policy, people in
the countryside could be more willing to give birth than those in the cities,
and there could be other problems," a policy insider had earlier told
Reuters, noting that it could lead to poverty and employment pressures among
rural families. Experts had warned that any impact on China's
population, such as a decline, could have a vast effect on other parts of the
world. Dr Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
said: "China's economy has grown very quickly, and many industries in the
world rely on China. The scope of the impact of a population decline would be
very wide."
^ The 2 child policy had little effect
on the birthrate and I don’t see the 3 child policy doing any different. It’s
not a bad thing to have less babies born in China – especially for the rest of
the world – since they already have a Billion People and being a Strict
Communist Dictatorship has not brought peace and harmony to the world. ^
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