China is reportedly planning to abolish all kinds of limits on how many children a family can have.
The State Council of China, which implements and manages the country’s family-planning policy, is said to have commissioned research on the repercussions of ending the country’s controversial birth-control rule, insiders have told Bloomberg.
One couple in China is allowed to have a maximum of two children at present. The two-child policy in 2016 replaced the earlier one-child policy, which had demanded the Chinese families have just one child for nearly 40 years.
China is reportedly considering scrapping its limit on how many children a couple can have
China has 1.4 billion people, accounting for 19 per cent of the global population, according to the United Nations.
The proposed change would be enacted nationwide, said one source to Bloomberg who wished to stay anonymous.
It’s said the proposals were looking to replace China’s current family-planning policy with one called ‘independent fertility’.
Apparently under the new policy, a married couple would be allowed to decide how many children they want to have.
A second source, also anonymous, claimed that a decision could be made as soon as the fourth quarter of 2018 while the authority might announce the outcome in 2019, according to the same report.
If the reports prove to be true, the decision would be revolutionary to the world’s most populous country, whose families have been largely subjected to a birth-control policy from the early 1970s.
One family, one child: For nearly 40 years, Chinese couples were only allowed one child
For about 40 years, the majority of Chinese families were only allowed to have one child.
The one-child policy, combined with a traditional Chinese preference for having sons, has created a gender imbalance so severe that as of 2015 there were 117 boys born for every 100 girls.
It is estimated that by 2020 there would be 30million enforced bachelors in China, who would be unable to find wives due to the massive gender gap.
The one-child policy has also left China with a ticking of a time bomb: a rapidly ageing population.
The ambitious nation has apparently ‘got old before getting rich’, a frustrating factor for the world’s second largest economy.
China is ageing more rapidly than almost any country in recent history, reported Forbes, citing the United Nations.
By 2050, China could face a serious labour shortage as the country’s dependency ratio for retirees could rise as high as 44 per cent by mid 21st century, according to the same Forbes article.
What is China’s one-child policy?
A young Chinese mother watches her child in front of a sign reading ‘birth control is a basic state policy of our country’ in Beijing on July 23, 2002
A mandatory one-child rule was launched in late 1970s by Beijing when China’s population was fast increasing – due to a post-war baby boom encouraged by Chairman Mao.
It was said the one-child policy was aimed at keeping the Chinese population under 1.2 billion at the end of the 20th century.
The ruthless policy was strictly enforced in urban areas. If a woman was pregnant with her second child, she would be asked to abort it.
If the couple decided to keep it, a fine would be applied – usually three times the family’s annual income.
Selective demographics in the country, such as rural residents and minority groups, however, were not bound by the policy.
If the reports prove to be true, the decision would be revolutionary to the nation of 1.4 billion
China had 222 million people aged 60 years or older as of the end of 2015, according to Xinhua News Agency. The figure accounted for about 17 per cent of the nation’s entire population.
Two-child policy was drafted and launched in China as a way to slow down its quickly greying population.
On January 1, 2014, the Chinese authorities launched a so-called ‘selective two-child policy’, which allowed couples to have a second baby as long as either of them is a single child.
China officially started its so-called ‘universal two-child policy’ on January 1, 2016.
Chinese family-planning authorities predicted that an extra three million babies would be born annually between 2016 and 2021 due to the shift of the policy.
Why and when did China start controlling its population?
China’s family-planning policy can be dated back to the early 1970s
China’s family-planning policy could be dated back to the beginning of 1970s as an effort to control the booming population.
In the 1950s after the Communist Party of China took over the country, Mao Zedong, the first Chairman of People’s Republic of China, believed ‘there is strength in numbers’.
The powerful leader encouraged post-war Chinese women to give birth to more children. He awarded those who have more than five offspring the shining title of a ‘glorious mother’.
As a result, between 1950 and 1960, approximately 200 million people were born in China, more than a third of the nation’s population in its founding year 1949 (542 million).
To control the quickly expanding population, the State Council unveiled a revolutionary family-planning guideline in 1973, encouraging couples to have a maximum of two children, with a four-year gap between the pair.
Less than a decade later, a one-child policy was rolled out, demanding couples have just one child.
The one-child policy was replaced by a two-child policy at the beginning of 2016.