‘Please, Have Another Baby!’ China Pleads With Couples

Snigdha Raju.K

After over three and a half decades of limiting families to a single child, China lifted, what is regarded to, as the world’s most controversial family planning arrangement, ‘the one-child policy’. It now has a new message for the country’s couples: ‘Please have another child!’

Why this change of direction?

A rapidly aging population and a shrinking workforce. When the one-child/one-birth policy was introduced in 1979, its motive was to control the Chinese population numbers from spiraling out of control due to the lack of housing and other facilities. This long term problem is what has led to China’s changing of the controversial scheme in 2015. It is projected that by 2050, almost a quarter of China's population will be over 65 years of age, according to the Asian Development Bank, a slightly higher rate than in the U.S. and more than twice India’s share.

The replacement, i.e., the two-child policy, still does not end the principle of government control over reproduction, say campaigners. The forced abortions for even women that were seven, eight months pregnant continued on. The selective sterilizations and female infanticide led by China’s centuries old preference for boys continued on.

Also Read: China Puts Curbs On Dating App Seeking Arrangement

The repercussions of the one-child policy are still being felt as people claim that 4 grandparents and 2 parents end up depending on the single child. On the other hand, it has now become harder for China to persuade the couples of the country. Many couples now feel that they can only have one child or none at all- thanks to the rocketing child care expenses, high living costs and long work hours.

This is reflected in the failure of the two-child policy- as China saw a 3.5 percent decline in the birth rate again in 2017 as opposed to the Communist Government’s expectation of a baby boom. The urban, educated women, whom the government hoped to produce a new generation of skilled labor, seem to be precisely the ones who are in no hurry to do so.

The government has gone as far as using the media to encourage university students to have babies while studying. Women continue to delay pregnancies and even marriage while also favoring smaller families, leading to low fertility rates. As a society becomes wealthier, their preference for a traditional larger family decreases, say scholars.

As a result, China is strongly expected to scrap all kinds of reproductive limits, even as soon as this year, after decades of human rights abuses and widening demographic imbalances. People continue worry that the measure might not be sufficient to save the world’s second-largest economy from becoming like its aging counterparts like Japan.

On the Brighter side, countries like India, which have considerable population percentages of youth should take the lesson and treat the large population as an asset.