No Population ‘Boom’ Afterall
10th March 2008
After re-evaluating China’s one-child policy, Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Population and Family Planning Commission, has decided to uphold the regulation for at least another 10 years, until the population’s next birth peak. In an article on People’s Daily Online, Mr. Zhang addresses the rumors of the government eliminating this policy. He is quoted as saying:
Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now. It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development.
Zhang Weiqing also addresses the growing concerns that the one-child policy has created a population imbalance in both gender and age (with more males than females), and a society aging rapidly. Rather than only focusing on removing the one-child rule, he believes in a better understanding of the family planning policy as a whole:
Zhang stressed that the emerging problems should not be blamed solely on the one-child rule and ‘it will be simplistic’ to try to find a solution with a one-cut approach. He said that the immediate scrapping of the one-child rule at this time would cause more problems than it would solve.
Despite all the changes going on in China in anticipation of this year’s Olympics, they are really sticking to their guns on this issue. It is official: any radical changes regarding the child-limit will just have to wait.