Why China’s One-Child Policy Failed

Nanny Shi Xinmei, 51, recalled harsh enforcement of the policy in her home town of Zhumadian in Henan Province.

There is concern this week’s change may be too late to address these challenges in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, for China’s economic planners, the announcement is unlikely to alter the nation’s demographic trajectory.

China loosened the restriction in response to the aging population, according to a statement from the governing Communist Party. The typical understanding of the policy was incorrect. This made the government realize that the one child policy, which was one of the most hated social policies implemented by the government, was no more relevant. Those who lived in the countryside, and whose first child was female, could have a second. “Now it’s more like they’re catching up rather than shaping economic policy”. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of Chinese families were covered by the one-child restrictions.

The government credits the one-child policy with preventing 400 million births and helping lift countless families out of poverty by easing the strain on the country’s limited resources. The policy evolved into an intrusive and heavy hand by the country’s family planners. Reports of heavy fines, forced abortions and even forced sterilization abound.

“As long as the quotas and system of surveillance remains, women still do not enjoy reproductive rights”, Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch told AFP. Couples whose only child died as an adult, too late for them to have another, were particularly hard hit.

Now with a few 30 per cent of China’s population over age 50, and a warning by the global Monetary Fund (IMF) that China’s workforce is going into decline, there is urgent need to replenish the workforce necessary to drive the world’s number- two economy.

China has more than 1.3 billion people – nearly quadruple that of the United States – but its population is expected to be the oldest on earth in 15 years, The Washington Free Beacon reported.

Just as disturbing is the gender imbalance that is emerging in China. Infanticide is not uncommon. By May, 1.45 million couples had applied to have a second child – about 12 per cent of those eligible – disappointing demographers who had hoped the policy shift would do more to alter the balance in favour of youth. As many as 95 percent of children in orphanages are girls.

While attitudes have largely changed, especially in the cities, a traditional preference for boys means hospitals in China are not allowed to divulge the sex of unborn babies to their parents.

The birth limits that were enacted in 1979 dramatically changed the status of children in Chinese society. This group will be forced to support that huge gray cohort and it is not clear that they will have the emotional capacity to do so.

Still, even the state-run Xinhua news service took a rare jab at government policy, posting a compilation of communist propaganda posters from the country’s planned economy era digitally manipulated to urge couples to raise production levels – of children.

Assuming the cost of raising a child to be about 40,000 yuan a year, the additional consumption would amount to 120 billion to 240 billion yuan a year from the end of 2017, or 4-6 percent of total retail sales, it estimated. Not long after their daughter’s birth, Sun and his wife were issued a certificate for their compliance with the one-child policy.