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China Ends One-Child Policy

Posted by timothy on from the kids-vs-the-state dept.

jones_supa writes: China has scrapped its one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children for the first time since draconian family planning rules were introduced in 1979. The announcement followed a four-day Communist Party summit in Beijing where China's top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of heightened concerns over the economy. China will "fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an ageing population," the party said in a statement published by Xinhua.

6 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    People in the west don't understand that for most Chinese, the one child policy doesn't have effect. Because there are so many exceptions.

    1) If you and your partner were single kids, you can have two kids.
    2) Ethnic minorities have higher limits, and foreigners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan can have unlimited
    3) Rich people just pay the tax and have another child, because they are so rich from corruption money is nothing for them.
    4) Some provinces had already lifted the ban, or lessened it greatly.
    5) Children born outside China, including HK and Taiwan, don't count. Hence the large amount of birth tourism.

    So this is pretty much a symbolic act, but at least it's the communists admitting they can't control everything. I wonder how this will be spun off in China, since there the communists are still treated as nearly perfect, the thing everyone should aspire to be.

    1. Re:Doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      To be fair, "Taiwan can have unlimited" in much the same way that Finland can have unlimited. It's not China, despite what they'd have you believe.

      Also I like the phrase "birth tourism". Kind of a nice counterpoint to Switzerland's "suicide holiday".

    2. Re:Doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have three kids (all born outside China) and we have been to China several times. It is surprising to see how many people come up and ask how much the "tax" was on the third one.

    3. Re:Doesn't matter by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is surprising to see how many people come up and ask how much the "tax" was on the third one.

      I don't know how much for a 3rd, but the tax was 5000RMB, or about $700, for a 2nd child in Shanghai back in 2002, when I helped my wife's brother get a permit for his second kid. I have heard it was cheaper in the countryside, and in some western provinces, it wasn't being enforced at all.

  2. Re:Foreign policy affects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    China is already in a situation where their foreign policy can afford to be belligerent - they have LOTS of potential soldiers to spare. Do you know what decades of one-child policy, plus a cultural emphasis on male children, has produced? There is a HUGE difference in the number of men to women - tens of millions of men in China for whom there is no chance of a wife, simply because of the numbers.

    No family of their own, no children to go home to, and quite possibly no parents alive. China has tens of millions of potential soldiers, none of whom have to worry about what they leave behind when they ship off.

  3. Re:The population ponzi scheme... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    what is the solution that all the whining masses and spineless politicians are likely to accept.

    1. Improve education, especially early education of girls. Literate women have fewer babies than illiterate women.
    2. Improve healthcare, especially for early childhood diseases. People have fewer babies when they are confident their kids will survive.
    3. Public pensions. People will have fewer kids if they don't need them for financial support in old age.
    4. Make contraceptives available and affordable. Many women have more kids than they want.

    Population growth has declined, often dramatically, everywhere these policies have been adopted.

    If even the chinese can't keep a policy like this going then what chance anyone else?

    The Chinese are not ending it because it failed. They are ending it because it succeeded. Their population has stopped growing and has leveled off.