China's One Child Policy Eliminated After 35 Years; Government Worried For Future Economic Status
China will now allow two children each family breaking the one-child policy after 35 years after a Communist Party Leadership discussion on Thursday, according to The New York Times.
The one-child policy was declared in 1979 to decrease the country's birth rate and population growth and was relaxed in 2013. Recently China's aging population worries the leaders when it comes to their economy and labor shortages in the future, according to The Washington Post.
Couples who violated the one-child policy have encountered different types of punishment from heavy fines to forced abortions, according to BBC.
"To promote a balanced growth of population, China will continue to uphold the basic national policy of population control and improve its strategy on population development," Xinhua agency reported on Tuesday according to CNN.
Almost 1 million couples are allowed to have a second child under the new policy and health officials stated that it would result to two million births. Chinese government estimated that after 15 years, China would be the nation with the most number of elderly of more than 400 million that is over the age of 60, reported in CNN.
A professor of demography at Peking University, Mu Guangzong said during a telephone interview that, "I don't think a lot of parents would act on it because the economic pressure of raising children is very high in China," reported in The New York Times.
Wang Feng, a professor at Fudan University said, "China has already begun to feel an unfolding crisis in terms of its population change," If written into history the one-child policy will become the biggest policy mistake China has ever made, he added according to CNN.
The Chinese government is now expecting to accelerate the growth rate in the near future because of the amendment. The official records show that the country's labor population has been decreasing for three consecutive years in 2014, reported in The Washington Post.
