An Update on China's One-Child Policy

China is planning to abandon a policy that restricts the number of children each family can have.

According to a report seen by Bloomberg, the move will draw one of the world’s longest and most controversial social experiments to a close.

Introduced in 1979, the one child policy was implemented as a strategy to slow the populations growth rate- the Chinese government claims that the one child policy has prevented 400 million births.

But this figure is widely disputed by critics, who claim that China’s birthrate was already in decline, and all the policy did was encourage alarming rates of female infanticide.

In 2016, the rule was relaxed to allow families to birth two children. The easing of the policy helped increase the number of births in the country by almost 8%, according to state media reports.

But more is needed in order to combat the rapidly ageing population.

With birthrates in rapid decline since the 1980’s, the pressure is on President Xi JinPing as he makes moves to develop the economy.

The recent economic boom in China resulted from the population demographic of working age persons. The young population provided cheap labor.

 But this balance is shifting fast, and if birth rates don’t rise soon, then China could see a dramatic imbalance of retired citizens, with few working age people to support them.

The state council projected last year that by 2030, almost a quarter of chinas population will be over the age of 60. This will put strain on pension funds, services and China’s economy.

The proposals under discussion would see the ‘population control policy’ replaced with a so-called ‘independent fertility programme’. Where families are able to decide how many children to have.

Some feel as though the scrapping of birth limits will have little effect on the tendency of chinas declining births however.

The low number of newborns following the easing of the policy to 2 children signifies that the young generation is less willing to have more children.

Many families are unable to afford more children, and a decline in fertility rates has also been noted.

But for the baby- industry in china, even a slight baby boom could prove lucrative. Since the report was released, stocks in Danone, a baby food supplier and incubator manufacturer Ningbo David Medical Device company, stocks soared by 10%.

A formal announcement by China’s government could be made by the close of the year-

but many critics feel that  it is already too late for China to remove birth limits- and that the restrictions should have been removed long ago.