China tries out changes to one-child rule

EnlargeBy Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

In Cloudy Ridge, China, census worker Wang Xiurong, left asks Cao Xiurong, center, to check her household documents for the national tally.

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
BEIJING — With a wide smile and a newly issued census bag, Wang Xiurong walked the lanes of Cloudy Ridge, a village beside the Great Wall.
Wang and 100,000 others had fanned out across the Chinese capital to register residents for a once-a-decade census that begins nationwide Nov. 1. Wang, 45, said she's happy with one child, a daughter, 21, but it's a different story at the first household she registers.
PILOT PROJECTS: Feedback sought on one-child rule
"I wanted to have another child, preferably a girl, but the policy doesn't allow it, nor our own economic situation," said farmer Cao Xiurong, 39, whose son is 15. "I really hope my son will be allowed to choose how many children he has."
That choice may become reality for increasing numbers of parents, said Peng Xizhe, a professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, as the census data will prove crucial to planned reforms of China's "one-child policy."
"We do not have widely accepted population figures, especially fertility figures," Peng said. "If society and government get a better understanding of the situation, then it will be easier to make population policy."
Debates about policy change have gone on for years, but "hopefully we can see the policy changes happening early next year," he said.
Liang Zhongtang, a former senior adviser to China's family planning commission, said "officials are now working out plans for pilot projects in some provinces" that will relax birth restrictions.
Independent demographer He Yafu agrees that 2011 will see change.
"Using the new statistics, officials and experts will draft new laws on family planning," he said.
For 30 years, China has strictly limited family sizes. The policy was set to keep the population at a level that the Communists felt the country could handle. In 1980, the Communist Party stated that the policy would last for 30 years, said professor Siu Yat-ming, who researches Chinese family planning at Hong Kong Baptist University. "Now it's 30 years later, a lot of people are asking, 'Will they relax the policies?' " he said.
The first change will come in five areas, demographer He said. With a population of 230 million, the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, in northeast China, and Zhejiang and Jiangsu, in eastern China, will allow couples with one spouse who is an only child to have a second child, he said.
This represents an easing of current rules that permit second births where both parents are single children. Rural families have long been allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl.
Small-scale experiments in a handful of cities have already shown that birth rates do not necessarily rise if the restrictions are eased, Siu said. The pilot areas also produced a more normal gender balance, he said, compared with the stark imbalance nationwide caused by the traditional preference for boys, and abetted by illegal use of ultrasound technology, followed by selective abortions.
But he said top officials are still reluctant to make big changes, even though China is facing a problem of not enough babies being born, especially girls.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a Beijing think tank, suggests that by 2020 there will be 24 million more men of marriageable age (roughly 19 to 45) than women.
"The sharp rise in the number of men of marriageable age who fail to find wives will become a big hazard," Tian Xueyuan, deputy director of the Population Association of China, told the China Daily newspaper.
"It will increase incidences of women being bought as wives, as well as abduction and trafficking, and prostitution and pornography," Xueyuan said.
All Chinese should enjoy the right to choose, said Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute, an anti-abortion organization based in Virginia.
Mosher said the pilot program is a step in the right direction, "but it's not reproductive freedom."
"As long as the state declares it has the right to dictate the number of children, you will continue to have" abuses including forced abortions and sterilizations," which are widespread, he said.
"The whole exercise is one of government exercising control rather than any economic argument," Mosher said.
In response to an interview request, the Shanghai bureau of the National Population and Family Planning Commission issued a statement reiterating current policy: "encourage citizens to have late marriage and late childbirth, one child per couple. Those who meet the legal conditions can ask to arrange having another child."
Yet in Shanghai, family planning officials have for the past year been urging wider adoption of a "two child policy" for single children who marry, a loophole long permitted but only relevant in recent years as the first generation of single children reached marriage age.
Now the city aims to be part of reforms allowing a second birth if just one spouse is an only child, Xie Lingli, director of the city's Population and Family Planning Commission, told the Shanghai Daily in July.
"We know the one-child policy is unfair, but, to most Chinese people, it's not about fairness, but about money," said Shi Huili, a Beijing–based photographer who married this June. "If you have enough money, you can give birth to three, four or even more children, you only have to pay the fine."
As single children, Shi and wife Zhang Xue, both 26, can have two of their own, but the rising cost of kindergarten may restrict them to one, he said.
Back at Cloudy Ridge, farmer Cao Xiurong dreams of having a grandson and granddaughter. But she worries that even if it is allowed, the cost of raising children is soaring too high for her son, who will have to support his parents and grandparents.
"The pressure on him could be even greater," Cao said.
Contributing: Sunny Yang

Countries: China