Monday, December 28th, 2015. On Sunday, the National Popular Assembly (ANP, Legislative) of China, abolished the only child’s policy -approved in 1970 and launched in 1980, that only allowed couples have only one descendent. This new measure has already been decided and announced on October 29th at the annual plenary session of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and takes effect from next January 1st, 2016.
The Standing Committee of the ANP, in its bimonthly meeting resolved to reform the Law on Population and Family Planning so that all Chinese couples could have two children at most; because in December 2013 some concessions allowing some couples have only a “second son”, and according to certain exceptional circumstances.
The old law of “one-child” for many was considered too restrictive measure; but its aspirations were reducing the problems of overpopulation of this Asian giant, which already in 1980 had 987 million inhabitants and in 2013 exceeded 1,360 million, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
On the other hand, the Commission of Population and Family Planning, agency that implement control laws for population; said that if they had not established the “only child” Law, population would exceed 1,700 million people. Therefore, one of the advantages of this act is the potential economic development of the country and out of poverty for millions of people.
However, not all consequences have been favorable; since this restrictive family planning system was adopted, cases of forced abortions increased; It has been deprived of education or health to second or third children; and it has been confined in unofficial prisons to parents who broke the law.
In this regard, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, recently announced the awarding of the “hukou” (a kind of citizenship status) to thirteen million Chinese, mostly children of parents who violated the policy abolished; providing them first access to basic services that until now had been denied.
One of the most worrying consequences of the Law “only child” for the country, is that skilled labor has been declining, eroding the foundation of the pyramid of the Chinese population.
To cite some statistics that confirms this fact, in 2014 the workforce fell from 940 million to 930 million; and it is expected to lower the barrier of 900 million at the beginning of the next decade, a trend that authorities want to reverse for growth of the second world economy.
ALFA