China’s decision to move away from its one child per family policy is an historic and welcome change in an arbitrary law that had anyway outrun its dubious role in preventing the country’s population increasing too rapidly. Demographers point out that China’s fertility rate was coming down in the late 1970s when it was introduced and continued to reduce since then, mainly because of progress in womens’ education and employment. China’s rulers fear that at existing birth rates, there will soon be too few people of working age to sustain its economy and support an ageing population.
The one child policy represented social engineering on a grand scale by an authoritarian regime. A large bureaucracy was created in the 1980s, especially in China’s then largely rural society, to ensure it was obeyed. Most of the population complied despite its arbitrary nature. More recently a growing number of exceptions was allowed for ethnic minorities, farmers, the disabled and families in which both parents are single children.
So despite official expectations that these modifications in the policy would boost population growth, they have in fact made little difference. China’s population recently declined for the first time in 20 years and its workforce diminished from 940 to 930 million between 2012 and 2014. Looking ahead, there will be many more older people by 2030 and fewer of working age to support them. Since intergenerational family solidarity is a keystone of China’s social fabric, it makes sense to build this new policy into the ruling party’s new five-year plan running from next year. But most Chinese now live in over-crowded and increasingly expensive towns and cities. Many of the estimated 90 to 100 million families of child-bearing age directly affected may find it too costly to have a second child.
Hence this legal change may not result in a more balanced population overall. Because of a cultural preference for male children, and use of abortion to express it, there are 27 million more men than women in their twenties and thirties. Along with the fact that most families have only one child, these psychological and social scars will affect the society for generations to come.
But the Chinese are a resourceful people who have come through one of the world’s greatest economic transformations over the past generation. The scale of that change has astonished onlookers and bolstered its political leadership. Commenting on this latest move, the Indian economist and sociologist Amartya Sen notes that China’s demographic changes since the 1980s have relied greatly on a more sophisticated popular ability to reason about their family and individual welfare, especially among women. Such creativity should enable the country handle this transition beyond the one-child policy in coming years.