According to State Media on Monday, China will be sticking with their “One-Child Policy,” in the next decades in spite of the problematic effects of the system, such as the rapidly graying population and fewer girls being born.
There has been a rising assumption among Chinese experts, the media and people about whether the administration would relax the policy, which will allow more people to have two children.
However, Li Bin, Chief of the National Population and Family Planning Commission stated that there have been no plans in changing the policy.
“Historical change doesn’t come easily, and I, on behalf of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, extend profound gratitude to all, the people in particular, for their support of the national course,” She stated in the China Daily newspaper. “So we will stick to the family-planning policy in the coming decades.”
China has the largest population in the world and its thirty-year-old policy prevented about 400 million additional conceptions.
This system was introduced in the post-Mao Zedong period (1979) and was officially named as Family Planning Policy. Its purpose is to reduce the fertility rate to 1.7 offspring per family. This was imposed when population growth was going up in perilous levels.
This strict policy brought new dilemmas, according to demographic experts, the growing population of the elderly will be hard to maintain as the younger labor force begins to get smaller in the coming years.
It also resulted in an imprecise sex ratio where families abort females while trying to get males.