China’s One-Child Policy to be
Relaxed
After over
30 years of China’s strict, and controversial, one-child policy, it has now
been announced that the regulations are to be relaxed in certain aspects. The
law should say that if one of the parents is an only child, the couple shall be
allowed to have a second child, as opposed to only one. In many rural areas
this is already is the case, if you apply, and only then if the first child is
a daughter, or suffers from some kind of disability, though the gap between the
two children is expected to be 3 to 4 years usually.
While the
policy was introduced to help decrease the population of China, it has been the
cause of some unwanted effects. For example, it has created a slight gender
imbalance, this is due to gender specific abortions, generally a couple will
abort a baby if it is to be a girl as they wish for a male child to be able to
carry on the family name. This now means that there are far more men than
women, and therefore, there will be ‘leftover men’ that will be unable to find
a wife. The policy has also created something known as the 4-2-1 phenomenon,
something which occurs because there is a strong sense of tradition in China
where the children will look after their parents in old age, and the aging
population in China. This means that an only child at a working will be left to
care for two parents and four grandparents in retirement single-handedly.
The media
attention around this has been generally positive; however there are those who
question how effective it will be. The new policy should be beneficial to China
and its people, and experts say that a relax on this policy is highly unlikely
to lead to a dramatic population as some may fear, as this is why the policy
was introduced in the beginning.
