China’s One Child Family Policy has long been a source of debate in the Western world, where people consider it a human right to be able to have as many, or as few, children as they choose. The policy, which has been in place since 1979, requires each family to have just one child, unless there are extenuating circumstances. Such circumstances could include one or both of the parents being a member of a listed minority with a limited population, a previous child being disabled and both of the parents being only children and living in rural areas. In addition, some rural areas allow couples to have a second child after a set period if the first child is a daughter. 

In order to reach target figures, some women were forced to have terminations and others, in a bid to have a son, took measures to get rid of daughters, leading to a gender imbalance. Other problems include the fast ageing of the population, a shortage of young people to care for the elderly and the increase in selfish only children who struggle to see the advantages of caring for the community as a whole. 

It is no surprise that the 2010 Census showed an increase in the population of 73.9 million, or 5.8%, bringing the population to 1.34 billion. However, as a New York Times article pointed out, that was below the figure of 1.4 billion that the United Nations had predicted for China. Ma Jianting, the director of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, and cited in the article, explained that this has both good and bad points. From a resource point of view, there is now more to go around and there is little doubt that there has been an enormous improvement in the living standards of many Chinese people. However, the ageing population and gender imbalance are serious causes for concern and there are many who suggest that there should be a relaxation of the policy.

As Business Week reported in a recent 2012 article, a group of demographers, sociologists and economists have come together to suggest that the rules were relaxed. Wang Feng, Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Institute, points out that the government were still in the mind-set of just after the Cultural Revolution, when people were struggling to eat and live comfortably. In most areas, that has now changed and problems from an ageing population are coming to the fore. For example, Pearl River Delta enterprises are reporting a lack of labour, because young, fit people are at a premium and older, less healthy people are being employed in their place. 

In an open letter written in 2010 on the thirtieth anniversary of the policy and published on the Brookings Institution website, Wang Feng went on to say: “As China’s one child policy reaches its thirtieth anniversary, policymakers in China have yet to demonstrate an understanding and leadership to end a policy that was pushed through without much deliberation and debate, and that is clearly out of date today in view of China’s new demographics.”

Despite lobbying from the group of experts, the Chinese government has yet to take a strong stance on the issue. There have been small signs of relaxation. For example, in a 2010 article in The Guardian, Therese Hesketh wrote that birth quotas are no longer so rigid. In the past, a couple had to apply to have a baby and, if the area’s quota had already been reached, they were forced to wait until such a time that there was room in the quota. It is now no longer necessary for a couple to wait to have a first child and, in some cases, a second child may be allowed after a certain period of time and with permission.

The Business Week article mentions more relaxed policies in rural areas and less threatening slogans. For example, a previous slogan - “We would rather scrape your womb than allow you to have a second child!” - has now been replaced with a friendlier version.

Nevertheless, there aren’t any concrete signs that Chinese policymakers are going to make any drastic changes to the policy in the near future. As so often seems to have happened in China in the past, it may be a matter of waiting until the situation is drastic before anything is done about it.