AmCham-China Daily

With the current changes and efforts toward China’s “improvement” (banning thin plastic bags, controlling spitting, greening the city, and a smoking ban in the works) all before the 2008 Olympics, it isn’t a big surprise that China is also starting to reconsider its one-child policy. The government is considering gradually raising this limit on the number of children a couple can have. Whether or not this is an attempt to soften its human rights image, these gradual changes could potentially lead to sizable consequences…but nothing is official yet. China is still working on possible strategies to change the one-child-per-couple policy, but has yet to declare a solution among decision makers. Jim Yardley of the NY Times wrote an article today on the topic:

“We want incrementally to have this change,” Ms. Zhao said, according to Reuters. “I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers.”

Originally, this policy was created to contain China’s massive population, but this has also led to an imbalance in both gender and age, with a disproportional population of males, and as the larger earlier generations age, elderly. Yardley writes:

Chinese officials have sought to curb the excesses and abuses and have argued that the one-child restriction has prevented roughly 400 million births and allowed the country to prosper and better live within its resources. But China’s fertility rate is now extremely low, and the population is rapidly aging, especially in urban areas. Experts have warned that China is steadily moving toward a demographic crisis with too many old people in need of expensive services and too few young workers paying taxes to meet those bills.

Since this policy was established, the rules have already started to bend to a degree. Currently, the policy allows urban spouses to have two children if both spouses were from one-child families. In addition, rural parents are allowed a second child if their first was a girl and minorities are allowed two or more children.

Although China is serious about relaxing this child-limit, officials still fear any drastic changes could lead to a major population boom. With a current population of over 1.3 billion people, the last thing China needs is a ‘boom’ in its population.