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Page added on August 28, 2018
China May Scrap Two-Child Policy, Ending 40 Years Of Limits
Chins is getting desperate about its demographic slide.
One week after we reported that China floated a proposal to tax all working adults aged under 40 with the money going to a “maternity fund” to reward families who have more than one child, Beijing appears poised to scrap the limit on the number of children couples can have, with a state-run newspaper Monday citing a draft civil code that would end decades of controversial family planning policies. The wide-ranging code would get rid of a policy that has been enforced through fines but was also notorious for cases of forced abortions and sterilization in the world’s most populous country.
According to AFP, the Procuratorate Daily said the code omits any reference to “family planning” — the current policy which limits couples to having no more than two children. The draft code would go to a vote at the rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, in 2020.
In China, couples can now have two children – up from just one as recently as two years ago – but the birth rate is falling despite the new policy.
The Communist Party began enforcing a one-child policy in 1979 to slow population growth. The limit was raised to two children in 2016 as the nation scrambled to rejuvenate its greying population of some 1.4 billion.
Concerns continue to mount that an ageing and shrinking workforce could slow down its economy, while gender imbalances could lead to social problems. Childbirths have not increased as much as forecast since the two-child policy came into force, and there has been rising speculation the government will further ease restrictions.
Meanwhile, the working-age population has peaked (just as much of the western world has also)
And here is why that is a major, if not existential problem for Xi – as China attempts to transition from a pure debt-driven ‘production’ economy to a ‘consumption’ economy, the core consumer base of the nation is collapsing.
The draft code was discussed at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, a powerful body of lawmakers headed by President Xi Jinping, that will run till Friday. Other proposed changes include a one-month cooling off period before a divorce, during which either party can withdraw their application.
News of the proposed changes lit up social media.
“So they want us to have more babies and less divorces?” wrote one user on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
Speculation about a change grew this month after a government-issued postage stamp for the Year of the Pig in 2019 showed a porcine family complete with three piglets.
Previously, under the one-child restrictions those with multiple children were heavily fined. Some women were forced to undergo abortions while others were subjected to forced sterilisations. Exemptions were given to ethnic minorities like Uighurs and Tibetans and those living in rural areas if their first child was a girl. Couples who themselves were only children could apply to have additional children.
But couples have been in no rush to start larger families since the policy was loosened, with 17.9 million babies born in 2016, just 1.3 million more than in the previous year and half of what was expected, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
At the same time, births in 2017 even slipped to 17.23 million, far below the official forecast of over 20 million.
Of course, the bigger question in all of this is whether Japan is providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too.
Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home…
9 Comments on "China May Scrap Two-Child Policy, Ending 40 Years Of Limits"
Cloggie on Tue, 28th Aug 2018 8:26 am
Ever more people see raising kids as a burden and prefer to lead consumer lives, tourist lives, career lives, porn lives or all of the above. Marriage is a gamble, with 50% leading to divorce, usually initiated by the woman, who knows she has the judiciary on her side. Many women are afraid of child birth or even sex, especially in overdeveloped Japan.
More wealth and comfort leads to ever less children.
JuanP on Tue, 28th Aug 2018 10:23 am
I skipped the article because I don’t waste my time reading articles on China at ZH; they tend to be extremely biased and inaccurate. I do think that China is very likely to end all of its population control programs in the near future, though, for the simple reason that they are absolutely not needed any more in any way since its fertility levels have been below the government’s targets for years now.
joe on Tue, 28th Aug 2018 10:26 am
Such thinking should not be a surprise. In poverty stricken Africa with high mortality rates families are huge. The parents logic is that they need lots of kids to help them when they are old. In the rich west, kids are a lifestyle choice particularly in Europe where socialism rules, women don’t fear any decisions they make because there is little fear of the consequences. Its folly of course the pass judgment either way, cause we are all f**ked anyway. Its an interesting footnote to the death of socialism that one of the original central core beliefs (the death of the mother+father family) has so clearly failed. Now if only there was a way to reverse the damage that the ‘sexual revolution’ has done to western society…….
Davy on Tue, 28th Aug 2018 11:10 am
Pretty sad when a country is doing something right considering LTG and they find a way to call it a desperate situation of demographic decline. In my opinion any nation in demographic decline and with stability will be much better prepared for the real slide of all nations on the way.
Anonymouse1 on Tue, 28th Aug 2018 2:28 pm
Yes, its too bad population control wasnt on your fathers mind when he was banging that goat, what, 70 years ago or so? exceptionalturd.
You never would have been born. Think of all the resources and pollution that could have been averted if your dad had been more mindful of his duties to protect the earth for future generations.
Sissyfuss on Tue, 28th Aug 2018 4:38 pm
Agree with Juan. The fertility rate in 2015 for China was 1.57, well below replacement level. This reeks of desperation by the party because they know what comes next, immigration.
Cloggie on Wed, 29th Aug 2018 10:24 pm
Declining populations are a blessing, but currently it is going too fast in the developed nations of the North, leaving the planet to the stupid high performance breeders of the South, creating an extremely nasty “dark” planet of the 21st century, with crashing standards everywhere.
IQ80 planet, a planet of drug dealers.
I fear that scenario much more than silly peak oil or even climate change.
That’s why I begin to favor a stone-hard Brexit, so Europe can team up with Russia, China, Korea and Japan, so the Anglos can commit racial suicide in all calm on orders of their kosher overlords.
#ArcticAlliance
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/an-arctic-alliance/
We’ll pick up the pieces in North-America afterwards.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 29th Aug 2018 11:16 pm
Clogg
What the hell do you mean teaming up? You aren’t playing volley ball..Your economy is going to collapse soon..And there is nothing you can do because its being caused by oil scarcity..You are so dumb and have such a low conservative IQ..
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