Beijing: The policy that supports every married couple to have up to three children in China has been rolled out far earlier than many expected. On May 31, one day before International Children’s Day, a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, which took place in Beijing, announced the new decision.
Earlier in May, the results of the seventh national census were released to the public, demonstrating the country’s multiple demographic challenges, including slower growth, a growing aging population and a shrinking working-age population.
The time period from implementing the policy of single child for most urban couples to allowing every couple to have up to two children spanned over three decades. The rural and ethnic minority couples have largely been exempt from the family planning policy. Compared with that, the five-year-span from two- to three-child policy is a lot shorter.
The new policy is expected to maximize the population’s role in boosting economic and social growth and address the risks of a downward trend in fertility, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).
Longtime concerns
Learning about the long discussions regarding birth control in the past several years might help people understand the rationale behind the new policy. Birth policy shift has been a hot topic in recent years in China, especially at the annual “two sessions,” namely those of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Zhu Lieyu, a lawyer from Guangdong Province and a deputy to the 13th NPC, has been calling for a three-child policy since 2018. Zhu said that for more than two decades, the total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman would have in a lifetime, in China has been lower than 2.1, the current internationally accepted level for developed countries at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. “This has caused an imbalance in the demographic structure of China,” Zhu said. He is glad to see the new policy in place and said more supporting measures need to be introduced to go with the new decision.
Regarding the obstacles that have made Chinese parents hesitant to have more children, including financial burdens, a shortage of infant care services and impacts on the professional career, he suggested introducing more measures such as giving new mothers a three-year paid maternity leave.
This suggestion though was commented on by many netizens for being “impractical.” “That means if a woman plans to have three children, the employer needs to give her maternity leave for nine years and still pay her,” a netizen said in a post. “I don’t think that will work,” the commentator concluded.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
