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Ask the Experts: SU professors discuss change to China’s one-child policy

UPDATED: Nov. 10, 2015 at 9:27 a.m.

The Chinese government has announced that married couples are allowed to have up to two children, ending the country’s controversial one-child policy.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a press release that halting the policy would “increase labor supply and ease pressures from an aging population,” according to a The New York Times report.

The Daily Orange spoke to Yingyi Ma, an associate professor of sociology, and Norman Kutcher, an associate professor of history, about China’s policy shift in family planning.

The Daily Orange: What was your reaction when you heard the announcement?



Yingyi Ma: I anticipated (the ending of the one-child policy) several years ago so it’s not a surprise at all. … I think China has followed a pattern of many other Western industrial societies with its aging population, but the difference is China has done it in such a contracted way, full speed, making the problem especially astute.

Norman Kutcher: I wasn’t particularly surprised because it has been talked about for a while.

The D.O.: Aging population, which could slow down economic grow in China, is a major factor leading the policy change. What do you make of this concern?

Y.M.: I guess the policies are really driven by the economic considerations because they want to enlarge the youthful population to make the productive economy bigger. But the problem is … from the individual family point of view, they may not really produce those kinds of population changes right away because of a concern of rising costs of raising kids.

N.K.: One thing is certain, economic growth plays a huge role. The economy has been slumping and the Chinese government has known for a long time that their economy cannot forever be run by exports and they have to fuel domestic consumption. Consumption has been rising but they needed to accelerate even more. When you have more than one child, then you are going to have more people to buy things for.

The D.O.: Do you think the policy change would resolve the crisis?

Y.M.: I think it really takes at least a couple of years for us to see the data. … It’s really a phase-in kind of policy because just two years ago, they started this nationwide relaxation of one-child policy because they allowed couples, either one of which coming from a one-child family, to have more than one child. So that really makes a lot of households to actually have two children. … But again, it’s not abandoning family planning altogether. It’s still limited to two children.
The D.O.: What kind of population growth do you expect as a result of the policy change?

Y.M.: We have to wait and see. But based on the past two years of policy impact … I think the government is anticipating a certain number of newborns, which they really don’t have. In other words, those people who are eligible to have more than one child actually choose not to. … If this kind of culture or tendency persists under this new policy, we would continually see this kind of low turnout of the newborns than what the government anticipated.

N.K.: I don’t expect there to be a dramatic change in population. … I predict in urban areas many people will not even like to have two children. In rural areas, many people have two children anyway because the one-child policy is applied differently on the countrysides.

The D.O.: Do you think the policy change will have a cultural impact, especially in regards to sexually selective abortions, which are common in the country?

Y.M: Definitely. … If more families are allowed to have more than one child, of course, sexually selective abortions will decline.





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