China Allows Couples to Have Three Children: Major Shit in One-Child Policy
Couples That Failed to Comply with One Child Rule Were Forced Out of Employment, Faced Hefty Fines, and Even Enforced to Have Abortions
The government of China has recently made an announcement in which they had allowed the married couples throughout the country to have up to three children after a recently conducted census has shown steeply declined statistics in the rate of births across the country. In the year 2016, the Chinese government has scraped their one-child policy, which was in effect for the past decades, allowing a married couple to have the limit to conceive two children, which still failed to lead forward a sustained rise in the number of births, making them shift to three children.
Relaxation of birth policy in China
The increasing cost of raising children in major cities of China has caused deterioration in the couples across the country of China to not have any at all or only one child, let alone three children. This latest move regarding the increasing number of childbirths up to three children has been approved by the President of China Xi Jinping during a meeting with the top officials belonging to the Communist Party.
According to Chinese President Xi Jinping, the three children plan would come with additional benefits for the parents, providing them with supportive measures that will be conducive to the improvement of the structure of the population of the country while trying to fulfill the strategy of China regarding active coping with the increasing aging population of the country, while maintaining the advantage and benefaction of the human resources.
But the organization for human rights of the residents of China, Amnesty International, has stated that the policy, similar to its predecessor approved by the Chinese President at that time, is in violation of the sexual and reproductive rights of China.
The team head of China’s branch has said that the governments have no business in the regulation of the number of children couples should be allowed to have. Rather than further optimizing the birth policy of the country, the Chinese government instead should respect the life choices made by the residents of China, ending any punitive or invasive controls over the decision of family planning of the people.
Some of the experts have become skeptical of the impact. According to the senior economist working at Commerzbank, Hao Zhou said that the relaxation in the birth policy has proven to be an effective measure; the previous two-child policy should have provided some positive feedback and would not have required further extend it into three children. There are very few couples who would want to have three children while residing in China, as young couples mostly could afford to have two children at maximum. The fundamental problem in this is the high living costs; meanwhile, the pressures of life have also become massive even at a young age.
Census report
The recently conducted population census by the government of China, whose results have been published in the month of May, has revealed that in the previous year, about 12 million infants have been born throughout the country, making it the lowest number of recorded births since the decade of 1960s, which is a significant decline from the year 2016, in which 18 million children have reportedly been born in China. This has majorly impacted the implementation of the three children policy by the government.
The census was conducted in the last quarter of the year 2020, in which seven million census takers took part by going door to door for the collection of population information from households across the country.
By observing the huge number of people who had taken part in the survey, it is now considered to be the most comprehensive resource on the population of China, which plays an important part in the planning for the future. It has widely been expected by the citizens of the country that after the revelation of the data collected reading the census of China, the family policy regulations would be relaxed to a certain extent, as the government later announced the approval to have three children per couple.
The previous move of the Chinese government in the ear 2016 by allowing married couples to have up to two children has failed miserably in the reversal of the rapidly falling rate of childbirths in the country, despite an increase after two years immediately afterward.
The trend of the population across China has shaped largely over due to the implementation of the one-child policy, which was introduced by the government in the year 1979 to slow down the rapidly escalating growth in population throughout China.
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