China has announced the end of its one-child policy. From now, all couples would be allowed two children. Introduced in 1979, the One-Child Policy is China’s population control program. It has been controversial because its enforcement has utilized coercive measures, including forced abortion and forced sterilization.
Communique was issued in this regard by the ruling Communist Party after a four-day meeting in Beijing to chart the course of the world’s second-largest economy over the next five years.
The Communist leadership met in Beijing to discuss ways to put the country’s stuttering economy back on a smooth growth path as it struggles with structural inefficiencies and social policies left over from an era before it embraced market reforms.
Known as the fifth plenum, the conclave discussed the next Five-Year Plan for China the 13th since the People’s Republic was founded in 1949.
The policy restricted most couples to only a single offspring, and for years authorities argued that it was a key contributor to China’s economic boom.
China’s population-control policy restricts couples in urban areas to only one child. In rural areas, families are allowed to have two children if the first is a girl. Other exceptions include ethnic minorities and couples who both lack siblings themselves.
Permitting more than one child is a step toward freedom, which will curb the forced abortions and fearful abandonments that have characterized so much of family planning in China for the past 35 years.
But after years of strict, sometimes brutal enforcement by a dedicated government commission, China’s population the world’s largest is now ageing rapidly, gender imbalances are severe, and its workforce is shrinking.
The concerns led to limited reforms in 2013, including allowing a second child for some couples in urban areas, but relatively few have taken up the opportunity.
The world’s most populous country has enjoyed a decades-long boom since the ruling party embraced market economics and opened up to the rest of the world from the late 1970s.
The meeting reiterated the Communist Party’s goal to double 2010 GDP by 2020, as part of its aim to achieve a “moderately prosperous society” by the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding.
