China’s ghost children detail difficulties

Three years after she became a national symbol of the abuses of China’s strict family planning policy, Feng Jianmei finally had a second daughter in August. “If people have a second child, then they really won’t be able to afford a home in this property market”, wrote another, commenting on a similar story on the Chinese website of Global Times, a nationalist newspaper.

The relaxation of the family planning policy will probably lead to a higher birth rate in China, but how much higher than the current 1.2 percent is uncertain as birth rates in its East Asian neighbors are also very low, said UBS China economist Wang Tao. “Think about it: People do not even have control over their own body”.

Others said that the announcement didn’t go far enough, and called on the government to totally abandon its population control policies. Chen, from Hebei province outside Beijing, wasn’t eligible for more than one child, but had a second, anyway.

A statement from the party’s Central Committee carried by the official Xinhua News Agency said the decision to allow all couples to have two children was “to improve the balanced development of population” and to deal with an aging population. Introduced in 1978, the policy originally applied to couples living in China’s cities but was eventually extended to the countryside. Members of ethnic minorities were exempt. Rumors had already been swirling in China that the policy would be adjusted at a meeting on China’s next five-year plan that was held this week.

China’s “one-child” family planning regime, which Beijing announced Thursday would end after nearly four decades, has seen arbitrary and often brutal enforcement, including forced abortions and sterilisations.

Other netizens took 1960s-era Cultural Revolution propaganda posters and put new, mocking slogans on them. “So the likelihood is that the effects of one-child policy will linger for generations”. He was released in 2012 and came to the USA, where he now serves as a visiting scholar at the Catholic University of America and visiting researcher at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ. In 2013, the party announced that couples in which at least one partner was an only child could have two children without penalty. These efforts should not be allowed to stagnate; rather, they should be revived.

A few officers of the family planning policy caused many tragedies during the execution of the policy. “And people in all levels of government receive kickbacks and benefits from their participation in it”. “It is too late for us now”, said Liu, who lives in central Henan province.

In every county, he recalled, blackboards would record how many children each family had. It’s the fact that the government is setting a limit on children and enforcing this limit coercively. But just because all couples can now have two children, that doesn’t mean all want to take advantage.

The end of China’s one-child policy is unlikely to prevent a slump in the country’s economy or effectively tackle its demographic challenges in the near future, say experts, even though the move could spark a rise in new births by up to 50 per cent in the near term.

No one anticipates any immediate boom in babies or economic growth for China.

China’s workforce had grown by 100 million people since 1990 but began to decline two years ago. At the same time, the over-60 population is exploding.

“It’s safe to say that the two-child policy won’t bring huge pressure on food security and basic public services, such as health, education and employment”, Wang said. Larry is our main news editor.