By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Authorities in Beijing are considering a relaxation of the country’s controversial one-child-only policy, not because they’ve seen the light, but because officials are beginning to realize that the population has become dangerously imbalanced.
The Guardian is reporting that the three-decade-old rule limiting couples to one child may give way to a two-child policy sometime within the next five years. This comes after renewed warnings from experts that the country’s 1.3 billion population has become severely unbalanced with too few adults of working age able to support the nation’s exploding senior ranks.
And because the culture favors boys over girls, female babies are routinely aborted, leaving large numbers of young Chinese men to face a future without a spouse. Many experts believe the effects of this gender imbalance are already being felt and may be behind the rise in sex trafficking in China.
Experts say pilot programs for a two-child policy have shown that it would not result in a population boom. They also believe a uniform two-child rule would be fair, easy to enforce and would help to rebalance the population.
Wang Yuqing, who spoke at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – an advisory body meeting now in Beijing – said officials are considering a proposal that the new policy be introduced gradually so as not to cause a sudden boom in births. For instance, urban couples whose first child was female may be allowed to have a second child from as early as 2015, he said. They may also also couples who are only children to have two children within the next few years.
The one-child policy was adopted in 1979 to curb a population surge that resulted from Mao Zedong’s suggestion that having children was a patriotic duty. The law has been brutally enforced, with millions of Chinese babies slaughtered either before or after birth, and women forced to be sterilized or to use contraception.
Many experts believe these coercive family planning methods are behind the abnormally high number of female suicides in that nation. At present, more than 500 women kill themselves every day in China, the only nation on earth where female suicide rates surpass those of males.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
