China Now Allows Three Children, Up From Two Since 2015

The Communist busybody control-freak one-child imposition has been a blunder of mythical proportions

Births down to 12 million from 18 million in just 5 years

China said Monday that it would allow all married couples to have as many as three children and provide government support for education and child rearing, a move that comes as Beijing struggles to reverse a worsening demographic situation that presents a host of social and economic challenges.

The shift comes more than five years after Beijing ended its decadeslong “one-child policy” to let all couples have two children, and follows the May 11 release of census figures showing China’s population on the cusp of a historic turning point after years of rapid growth.

The announcement came after a Monday meeting of the Politburo, the Chinese Communist Party’s top decision-making body, chaired by leader Xi Jinping —a signal of concern over the demographic situation at the country’s highest levels. State-run Xinhua News Agency said the change would “improve the country’s population structure, actively implement the national strategy to respond to the aging population, and maintain the country’s demographic advantage.”

Traditionally, such decisions have come out of broader Communist Party policy conferences. Some demographers had expected a loosening or even a lifting of birth policies at the end of the year at a roughly annual gathering of the top few hundred party officials.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Yi Fuxian, a U.S.-based researcher and longtime critic of China’s population policies. “It signals how concerned Xi Jinping is.”

Mr. Yi said that by itself, the move won’t change the broader trends. More than merely lifting the cap on the number of children that families can have, though, Monday’s announcement sets the stage for a host of potentially sweeping changes on healthcare, retirement, pensions and social welfare.

Under the new policy, the government said it would offer more equitable educational resources and reduce educational expenditures for families—policies aimed at removing obstacles widely seen by experts as holding back couples from having more children.

The question now is whether the Chinese government’s relaxing of birth restrictions will make a difference in persuading more of the country’s couples to have more babies.

 

In 2013, the government allowed couples to have two children when one of the parents was an only child, and in 2015, Beijing said it would allow all couples to have up to two children.

About half of Chinese couples are willing to have two children, according to a 2017 study by the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation.

The once-in-a-decade census showed 12 million babies born in China last year, the fourth straight year in which births fell, despite the relaxed restrictions. In 2016, there were 17.86 million births.

The census also showed a sharp rise in the percentage of Chinese aged 60 and above, to 18.7% of the population as of the end of 2020, up from 13.3% in 2010. The portion of Chinese citizens aged between 15 and 59, representing the size of its working population, stood at 63.35% in 2020, down from 70.1% in 2010.

“Evidence in other countries suggests that, once [the] birthrate is on a downward trend, it is difficult to…reverse it,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, years of government efforts to reverse falling birthrates have largely failed. But the scale of China’s challenge is on a different order.

For more than three decades, China relied on young workers to fuel its economic growth and build up the world’s second-largest economy. Now, the impact of the one-child policy—imposed by Beijing in 1980—is becoming apparent, having effectively prevented the births of millions of workers and women of childbearing age, as the number of senior citizens is climbing.

 

Source: The Wall Street Journal

16 Comments
  1. yuri says

    it can easily be argued that Chinese policies have been very successful

    1. Raptar Driver says

      Okay then let’s hear your argument.

      1. yuri says

        I don’t argue with inferior racist LGBT amerikan rats—
        “amerikans are not at all happy . they feel themselves lacking in something…I admire their kind of happiness but I do not envy it: it is the happiness of a different and INFERIOR species”. Stendhal

      2. Hoyeru says

        easy. With the upcoming automation of a lot of industries, China really won’t need that many people. Less people, less mouths to feed too. 1.4 billion is way too many.
        What else you got?

    2. Juan says

      It depends on the REAL goals.

      1. yuri says

        context, social (urban vs rural) conditions, culture, religion, needs, resources, capacity, values are embedded in “goals”
        “of all peoples in an advanced stage of economic civilization amerikans are least accessible to long views always and everywhere in a hurry to get rich they give no thought to remote consequences—they see only present advantages…amerikans do not remember, they do not feel: amerikans live in a materialist dream”. Moisede Ostrogorski

  2. Ultrafart the Brave says

    Looks like they weren’t thinking far enough ahead, way back in the 80’s.
    What else might they be overlooking right now, looking to the next 40 years?
    But it has to be said, at least they are trying.

    Meanwhile, the political class in the vassal states of Team America ® see no further than the next election cycle and the prospect of their next big fat salary, benefits and pension raise awarded by themselves to themselves.

  3. Ying Jun says

    The author of this piece is talking rubbish. What the Chinese government is doing is the right and a smart thing, checking and changing policies when it needs changing. If China did not introduce one child policy back then, then China’s population would be worse than India’s. That would be chaos and not enough food to feed its population. Now China is relaxing child birth policies. China should make it economically attractive for parents to have more children. China is becoming like the West’s capitalist society where life is so expensive that people refuse to have more kids.

    1. Juan says

      Good slave.

      1. yuri says

        racista pridurok, packuda kyslyy

  4. Raptar Driver says

    Yes this is awesome because what we need more in the world is Chinese people?

    1. Juan says

      Hopefully, liberty loving, tyranny fighting chinese people. Not more slaves to the CCP machine.

      1. yuri says

        u must be an uncivilized racist fascist amerikan psychologically culturally impoverished …..”amerikans are ignorant and unteachable”. George Santayana
        “no people are more entertained and less informed than amerikans…amerikans do not converse–they entertain each other. amerikans do not exchange ideas–they exchange images. the problem with amerikans is not Orwellian: it is huxleyan: amerikans love their oppression”. Neil Postman

    2. yuri says

      we do not need more boorish uncivilized illiterate amerikans like you–rat driver
      “amerikan parents teach their children to have bad manners”. Geoffrey Gorer
      “amerika requires a stupefied population…in amerika the citizen has been transformed into a client, the worker into a consumer”. Christopher Lasch
      “amerikans poorly understand that individualism produces uniformity”. Philip Slater
      “amerikans are over-conformist semi automatons”. both David Riesman an Istvan Meszaros
      “individuality has disappeared in USA”. Horkheimer
      Adorno described all your conversations: “shallow, bombastic, fatuous”
      “amerikans are afflicted w a shallow national character”. David Riesman
      Arthur Koestler compared you robots to 5th century Romans: “a similarly contactless society populated by automatons…a similarly soulless politically corrupt everybody for themselves society”
      no run along you racist inferior robot and sexually assault your mobile phone

  5. Juan says

    A society of pampered only children, what could go wrong.

  6. Hoyeru says

    seems like another worthless and obvious anti-China BS. Xi is OH SO WORRIED. WHo wrote this the US state dept of CIA or Wall street journal?

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