China to allow couples to have up to three children to cope with aging society
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • 3 years ago • 25 commentsBy: Rhea Mogul
China will allow couples to have up to three children amid worries that the number of working-age people in the world's most populous country is falling too fast, state media reported Monday.
Xinhua news agency reported that the change was approved during a Communist Party Politburo meeting chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The news follows census data that showed China's working-age population shrank over the past decade while the number of people older than 65 rose, adding strain on the economy and society. It's the slowest growth in decades and could pose a major threat to China's ambitious economic goals, experts have warned.
"Birth policies will be further improved. Policy that allows a couple to have three children will be introduced with supporting measures, which will improve China's population structure," Xinhua reported.
Parents sound skeptical about China's new three-child policy
The Communist Party has enforced birth limits since 1980 to restrain population growth, and the dwindling population is partially a result of a one-child policy imposed in 1979. Couples who didn't abide by its family planning laws faced losing their jobs and being fined. In some cases, mothers were forced to have abortions or be sterilized.
Restrictions were loosened in 2015, after calls to change the one-child policy amid slowing economic growth and warnings of economic issues that could arise from an aging population. Families were then allowed up to two children per family.
However, the liberalization of policies failed to revive the country's declining birthrate. The 2020 census revealed that there were 12 million births last year, down from 14.65 million in 2019, an 18 percent decline, continuing China's descent to a near six-decade low.
Meanwhile, the number of older people also grew to 18.7 percent of the total, up from 13.26 percent a decade ago and about 10 percent in 2000.
Some experts warned that the government's proposal will likely fall short because it fails to recognize the reasons behind China's drastically declining birthrate.
"People are held back not by the two-children limit, but by the incredibly high costs of raising children in today's China," Yifei Li, a sociologist from NYU Shanghai, told Reuters. "An effective policy should have provided more social support and welfare. Raising the limit itself is unlikely to tilt anyone's calculus in a meaningful way."
Zhang Xinyu, 30, agreed, adding that the burden motherhood placed on women in China was too great for her to have a second child, never mind a third.
"It's mostly women bearing the responsibility of raising children," she told Reuters. "And this society hasn't provided women with much support. So actually, if men could do more to raise the child, or if families could give more consideration for women who had just had children, actually a lot of women would be able to have a second child."
Many comments on China's social media platform, Weibo, echoed these statements.
"It's not a question of how many children to have. It's a question of whether the cost of childcare can be reduced," wrote @Kain_Yang.
Xinhua reported that the new policy will address the "deep and wide-ranging" factors that have deterred couples from having more children, but did not specify how it would do so.
The head of Amnesty International's China team, Joshua Rosenzweig, criticized China for its policy, calling it "invasive and punitive."
"Under such a policy, couples could still be penalized for their decisions around childbirth," Rosenzweig said in a statement. "Everyone, regardless of marital status, should be entitled to sexual and reproductive rights, including whether and when to become pregnant."
Rhea Mogul The Associated Press, Vincent Wan and Reuters contributed.
The head of the Amnesty International China team is just so full of shit. Nobody is preventing women from having children or forcing women to have children, and as has already been realized, Chinese women don't want so many children for a number of reasons. Rural agricultural families have ALWAYS been able to have three children - my wife was a farm girl, and she has two brothers. So unbelievable that people are trying their damndest to demonize China.
Couples who didn't abide by its family planning laws faced losing their jobs and being fined. In some cases, mothers were forced to have abortions or be sterilized.
You have to wonder if the brutal Chinese government will, at some point, force women to have children?
It seems to me that every country in the world might have had some things happening in their past that others may not approve of, and maybe even your country has laws being passed right now in certain States that force women to retain a pregnancy that for some reason they might have preferred to terminate. Isn't that forcing women to have children?
That is completely false (unless involving a late term abortion) and no one is forcing a woman to get pregnant which is feasible to say the Chinese government would do.
I'm sure Aspirin is available in China for the ladies to squeeze between their knees ...
I guess the point of a totalitarianism nation forcing women to conceive was overlooked.
By whom? Is this the latest diatribe against China, that they are 'forcing' women to get pregnant rather than using Quebec's “revenge of the cradle” method of enticement?
By you.
With China's history a realizable diatribe that women would be forced into breeding.
China isn’t a totalitarian nation. Authoritarian yes, but not totalitarian. They are trying to walk a delicate line between maintaining that authoritarian government while also have an advanced, well educated nation.
I highly doubt the 52% or so of their population that is female would be willing to go along with a campaign of forced pregnancy/birth, and am equally as doubtful that you will find enough of the male population willing to try it either.
Call it what you want. China is brutal.
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Oh no doubt. Definitely not a shining example of human rights. But regardless, I do like the terms being used to have an understood meaning otherwise what's the point?
OF course it's totalitarian. It literally limited births and forced abortions on its population. That's why the majority of the population is male, not female as you claimed.
"When a state tracks the online communications of its citizens, tracks people physically using facial recognition technologies, controls all mass media and most social media, and imprisons large sections of its population in concentration camps, it is a totalitarian regime—pure and simple. Short of installing Orwellian two-way telescreens in everyone’s living rooms—or, in today’s terms, proof that it is watching every citizen through their smartphones’ cameras—it’s hard to see what more China can do to earn the label. The concentration of power in communist China already matches that of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and modern technology gives today’s China infinitely more refined mechanisms for monitoring and controlling its population."
Oh my God, I should run for my life, the organ harvesters might come after me to cut out my organs because I'm not Chinese Han ethnic or a loyal Communist and I have actually disagreed with some things the CCP has done and posted it on the internet, and my wife might get raped by the PLA Rape Squad to force her to become pregnant. HELP!!!!!! I thought I was living in an advanced Meritocracy, not a primitive third world country that experiences mass shootings pretty well every day, was incapable of containing the virus to the extent of almost 600,000 deaths, is famous for exhibiting prejudice against any kind of minorities, has made a mockery of democracy, and preaches to the world that it is the best nation in the world and its interests are more important than anyone's, and every nation must be as "good" as it is, or else.
Wow.. mocking rape victims and denigrating crimes against humanity. Let's try and remember what happened in the 1940s and stop it from taking place in 2021 in China, okay?
Seems to me that what I'm mocking is ignorant accusations and hypocrisy, but of course your comments are expected. When I read them, I can't help thinking of the classic line..."Vas you there, Charlie?"
but of course your comments are expected.
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I'm glad you expect me to take offense at genocide, rape and concentration camps. I'll happily argue against crimes against humanity [Deleted.]
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I doubt they try to go that far. You would not see much, if any popular support for a measure and the only way to force it is essentially a nationwide rape campaign, which very well could result in a flat out revolt.
No, that won’t happen. The Chinese people aren’t stupid and tolerate the government because it has largely delivered on its promise of economic improvement and growth.
China has a tendency to plan ahead, they have built dozens of super-modern 'ghost' cities over the past 2 decades. The new generation will not be wanting a roof.
Another reason is to continue employment for as many as possible. When I first came to China I couldn't understand why I saw so many people with big brooms when a machine could have done the job so much faster and easier, until I realized that all those people with brooms were earning a salary.
I doubt this makes much difference. The reason the birth rates didn’t increase when they raised the limit to two a few years ago is the same reason all other advanced nations are experiencing flat or declining population growth.
Kids are expensive and there is no longer a need for a large family. Why spread your resources among 4 or 5 kids when you can concentrate them on 1 or 2 and hopefully improve their odds of success?
Ah, but as you have seen by some of the dialogue above, ignorance, repudiation of logic, belief in lies and misinformation and outright anti-Chinese bias TRUMPS the truth. (Gee, how did Trump's name get in there?)
Now maybe, the infant mortality rate (murdered) for girls in the farming communities will stop.
Where is that happening? It seems to me that it is the Native Americans and First Nations that are suffering the most loss of their women and girls.
Many countries are facing an ageing population, including here.
From the tv report I saw last night interviewing Chinese women..the general consensus was if they could afford it, then fine...much the same as anywhere else around the world..