China is ending its 1 child policy

[hairbrushbedhair]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34665539

[Floundering]

Hoo bloody rah, look forward to more details .

[VimFuego101]

Interesting, I hadn't heard anything about this. I wonder what drove it?

[Anastasie]

Cautiously - this sounds like fantastic news - perhaps no more baby girls lying in the streets - I wonder why they are doing it.

[hairbrushbedhair]

It's a 2 child policy now

[howabout]

BBC midnight news did a report on this last night. Problem with one child policy is the ageing population with no-one to look after them.

[Branleuse]

they never did have a one child policy for the rich, only the poor

[Isitmebut]

China as we know is state controlled, where everything is planned, via 5-year plans, the current one is/has just taken place.

Here are the clues within the BBC link above;

"The controversial policy was introduced nationally in 1979, to reduce the country's birth rate and slow the population growth rate."

"However, concerns at China's ageing population led to pressure for change."

They many countries they now have a demographic problem with the prospect of a billion Chinese wrinklies (lol), and way too few being born to work/support the future economy and therefore the aged.

[TheNewStatesman]

Actually, that's not really true. Ethnic minorities mostly were allowed to have more than one, and in many rural areas I think it was allowed too. Middle class people who wanted a second child just paid the fine and regarded it as a cost of childrearing.

The new law is unlikely to have much effect on the fertility rate. Most of the decrease in the Chinese fertility rate happened prior to the legislation in any case. In urban areas, the cost of raising children (esp. education, with the intensive tutoring culture) is so high that most urban families will likely stick with one child anyway--and, like I just mentioned, in rural areas the average fertility rate is generally closer to two than one already.

[ShanghaiDiva]

New Statesman is correct - the policy only applied to Han Chinese and there were also different rules in rural areas - if the first child was a girl they were allowed to have a second.
The rules changed a while ago actually - if both parents were only children they were allowed to have another child - applied to Han chinese too. New statesman is also correct that many urban families decided not to have another child as education is expensive.
A friend of mine had her second in June - with all the relevant stamps from the authorities.
The driving factor is, of course, China's ageing population.

[OnlyHereToday]

Patriarchy destroys itself wrt imbalance between the sexes but women will suffer further because of it.

I remember a discussion on here where some thought women would be treated better if there was more demand for them. I don't think so.

[Poofus]

No, I don't think so either. Instead it has led to the abduction and sale of girls and young women.

[OnlyHereToday]

What a dreadful mess, India has a similar looming problem with millions of men being unable to find partners in the future.

[manicinsomniac]

Just saw a teenager interviewed on the news who was the 2nd daughter in a family who was only 'allowed' to have one (Mum had lost her job for keeping her 2nd child). The younger daughter didn't officially exist according to the government. She hadn't been allowed to go to school or access health care or anything. Terrible.

I hope this new policy really improves things

[TheNewStatesman]

In South Korea, there is a bit of a gender imbalance too, though not as severe, even without the 1 child rule. High education costs and traditional attitudes towards working mums in South Korea have resulted in the one-child family becoming the norm there as well. And as long as that is the case, lots of families will want that one child to be a boy.

I suspect that the oversupply of boys in China will continue for quite a while--but as the Chinese grow richer, it will increasingly take the form of selective abortion rather than abandonment of infants.

I think once a society has adapted to very low birthrate, it is difficult for the birthrate to go higher again.

Families get used to the idea of having more disposable income, and don't want to give it up. Also, societies start to get onto the intensive-education treadmill where loads of time and money and effort are invested in getting your child to succeed educationally. This results in high rates of academic attainment (as seen in Shanghai and South Korea), but also makes it hard for parents to have more than one child. Private schools and tutoring centers inflate their prices because they are working on the assumption that parents of a single child will have more cash to throw around per child.

[mimishimmi]

Too late now. People have been converted to benefits of having less children.

[Poofus]

South Korea is now pretty much past the sex imbalance problem. I imagine that China will get there too eventually (India will take much longer I think). I can only see this reform as being positive for the sex ratio, and positive for reducing the many millions (12m at last estimate) of girl children who are not registered because their parents wanted to have another try for a boy.

[Poofus]

Plus it's really not just about income, I don't think - this idea that parents will only want one child anyway. There are all sorts of ways in which having multiple children is a worry in China - their education, employment, housing and welfare, for example - plus I think the major shifts in gender norms have had a big impact.

[suzannecaravaggio]

I suspect that the oversupply of boys in China will continue for quite a while
will it not mean a sharp drop in numbers in the next generation since many of the men wont be able to find partners and wont have any offspring

[suzannecaravaggio]

if every generation only has one child, then population numbers will contract exponentially

[Aerfen]

The mistreatment of girls cannot be blamed on the one child policy when it is just as prevalent in India. It is due to backward attitudes still found in peasant societies.

Will the birth rate go up? Yes I think so.
Most peoples ideal is to have two children, not all, but most in the West, and there is no reason to think the Chinese will feel differently.

[Poofus]

"Peasant societies"?? China?

Of course mistreatment of girls cannot ONLY be blamed on the one-child policy. The problem is a high rate of son preference. But increasing the number of children a couple is allowed to register is likely to improve the situation for girls, if it means that they can now be registered whereas before they would have been hidden.

There IS reason to think that many Chinese might feel differently from those in the West re. number of children they want. They have been socialised to accept that one child is the ideal. China is also far behind many western countries in providing social welfare, has a housing crisis, has an exceptionally competitive education system and, in many big cities, a spiralling cost of living. These are all factors which may affect how people feel about fertility. Several surveys have shown that the "ideal" number of children for many Chinese is only one.

[PantryofWhoGivesAFuck]

Are you implying there are no rural poor in China?

[Casimir]

Hmmm, the Chinese revoke the one child policy while the Tories here are working to bring it in.

[Poofus]

Of course there are plenty of rural poor in China. But many are not "peasants", in that they no longer work on the land, and in fact since 2011 more than 50% of the population are living in cities.

So "peasant society"? I don't think so!

[yeOldeTrout]

A lot of Chinese are still rural workers. 34.8% of Chinese still work in agriculture.

That compares to, say, 47% in India or 2.9% in France. Most commentators (who know a lot more than me) reckon that most Chinese will still prefer 1 rather than 2+ children.

There will still be gender-selective & forced abortions with a 2 child policy, I reckon, just not as many.