China ends one-child policy

BEIJING, Dec. 27 (UPI) — Chinese lawmakers on Sunday ended their country’s decades-old one-child policy, allowing for couples to have two children. The new law will take effect Friday.

The National People’s Congress Standing Committee — the group that governs China’s laws — officially changed the longtime birth control policy after the government announced in October to amend the restriction.

The new law came about from China’s latest struggle with population control. When Deng Xiaoping instituted the law in the late 1970s, he said his law ensured “the fruits of economic growth are not devoured by population growth.”

Now, it’s an aging population and shrinking work force that threatens the country’s economic growth.

“To promote a balanced growth of population,” the Communist Party Central Committee said in October, “China will continue to uphold the basic national policy of population control and improve its strategy on population development.

“China will fully implement the policy of ‘one couple, two children’ in a proactive response to the issue of an aging population.”

The Chinese government considered the one-child policy an example of their power to engineer their society, but forced abortions, forced sterilizations, child abandonment and heavy fines for those in rural communities was a regular source of anger for many Chinese. Infanticide also became more common in rural areas where boys where favored over girls.

But in recent years, the government began to loosen its grip. Rural couples could have a second child if the first was a girl. In 2013, a new allowance was added for couples to have a second child if either parent was an only child.

However, the new policy is not likely to set off another population explosion. The current population of 1.3 billion in China is only expected to grow to 1.45 billion in 2029. Also, many couples chose not to have a second child, even after they were allowed, because of the cost and demands of raising children.