Two Child Policy in China: Too Little Too Late?

With its announcement of possible reforms, China has implicitly admitted its forty year-old one child per-family policy has been a failure.

The rules led to draconian abuses. There were an estimated 336 million abortions, including forced abortions and sterilizations at the hands of a powerful and intrusive family planning establishment, controlling the most intimate aspects of Chinese life. A rising callousness toward children and family has been attributed to the policy. Each year thousands of children are abandoned, and thousands more thought to be kidnapped and sold. So many abandoned babies die that the government set up “cottages” where parents can leave their children, mostly baby girls. On Wednesday, Time magazine reported police arrested traffickers of 10 children only to find out their parents didn’t want their children back. The parents had sold them to the gang for much-needed cash.

China’s largest news agency, Xinhua, reported a proposed change to the highly unpopular policy in August, speculation confirmed by government officials. The current policy restricts couples in most of the country to get permission for a second child only if neither has a sibling. In the future, only one parent would have to be an only child to qualify. After two years, the whole country would shift to a two-child policy, reports say.

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