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Family Planning

Better Than One?

After more than three decades of China’s One Child Policy, a pilot program to loosen restrictions is now under discussion. But will a change lead to a birth rate explosion, or worse, have no effect at all in slowing down the growth of an aging population?

December 2011 Issue | by Wang Qiusi, Han Yong

On July 10, Zhang Feng, director of Guangdong Province’s Family Plan­ning Commission, told the media that Guangdong had applied to become the first province to implement a pilot pro­gram allowing couples to have two children if one spouse is an only child. In a country that rarely exposes its inner political work­ings, Zhang’s very public comments, which soon came under fire from central officials, were likely an attempt to pressure the central government to loosen up the “One Child Policy.”

“The Guangdong government has kicked the ball into the court of the central govern­ment,” said Zheng Xinzhen, former director of the Institute of Population of the Guang­dong Academy of Social Sciences. “If the lat­ter approves the proposal, the former gets its way. If not, the latter bears responsibility for the decision.”

The pilot project in question, though not yet made public by central authorities, indicates a new round of attempts at mak­ing the country’s One Child Policy more relaxed. Since its introduction in the 1980s, implementation of the One Child Policy has varied from province to province, as well as from rural to urban areas. Currently, families in rural China are usually allowed to have a second child if their firstborn is a girl, because of a strong preference for male offspring who can carry on the family line. In urban areas, a gradual relaxation of the One Child Policy in recent years has allowed couples both of whom are only children to have a sec­ond child regardless of the gender of their firstborn.

Competition

Guangdong Province, known for its particu­larly strong traditional preference for male offspring, is one of the provinces where the One Child Policy has been enforced least rigorously. Since the 1980s, Guangdong has in practice been implementing a “two-child” policy, with punishments (usually fines) largely confined to couples who have a third child, or when the interval between their first and second child is less than four years. For this reason, Guangdong Province may cur­rently have the smallest population of only children in China, a major advantage when applying for the pilot program.

According to Professor Huang Runlong of Nanjing Normal University, if the new pilot program were to be implemented simultane­ously in Guangdong and Jiangsu, a province with roughly the same population as Guang­dong but that enforces the One Child Pol­icy very strictly, additional births in Jiangsu would be eight times the number in Guang­dong, due to its larger base of only children. Thus, Guangdong’s relatively liberal policy makes it a safer bet to prevent an unmanage­able baby boom. But others have argued that Guangdong’s liberal track record makes it unsuitable for the pilot program, as further liberalization would be seen as unfair to other provinces where the One Child Policy has been strictly enforced.

Currently, municipalities with low fertility rates such as Shanghai and populous provinc­es such as Jiangsu are among the contenders to be first to implement the pilot program. At present, however, even experts close to authorities are in the dark as to where, and when, the project will be first launched, if at all.

Uncertainty

An official from the State Population and Family Planning Commission (SPFPC) told NewsChina on condition of anonymity that the pilot program should have already been launched, but had been held back by a va­riety of factors. Originally, a select group of provinces were to implement the pilot pro­gram this year, followed by a second group of other provinces within five years, before the program was made national policy. Accord­ing to the official, the reason behind the delay lies in the inaccuracy of several vital sets of demographical statistics.

The first figure in question is China’s cur­rent fertility rate. Peng Xizhe, vice-president of the Population Society of China, told NewsChina that the 2010 census showed that China’s total fertility rate (TFR) over the previous 10 years has been less than 1.5 children (per woman of child-bearing age over her lifetime). “The figure would make China’s fertility rate as low as that of some major Western countries such as France and the United Kingdom. If so, China’s family planning policy needs immediate and drastic liberalization.”

However, few take this figure seriously. Its authenticity is highly doubtful due to a host of factors. It is commonplace, for example, for local census workers to falsify data due to lack of manpower. Other fac­tors include massive demographic migra­tion across the country and false reports by couples who have more children than the policy allows. Perhaps for this reason, clear birth rate statistics were not included with the release of the 2010 national cen­sus results; authorities chose to report an “adjusted” figure. For example, the 2000 census reported that the country’s fertility rate then stood at 1.22, a figure later “ad­justed” to 1.8. Following the 2010 census, the authorities adopted an adjusted fertil­ity rate of 1.65, still relatively low com­pared to the 2.1 rate considered necessary to maintain a country’s population.

Another aspect crucial to the decision, the willingness of Chinese couples to have more children, also remains unclear. Decades of economic development have led to a shift in traditional values, meaning that modern Chinese couples are, on the whole, less en­thusiastic about having more children. The question is whether or not this enthusiasm is low enough to prevent a sudden surge in birth rate were the relaxed policy to be imple­mented.

In an attempt to obtain reliable data, small two-child pilot programs have been launched in a number of counties. One such project launched in 2000 in Wufeng County, Hu­nan Province showed that given the chance to have two children, 57.42 percent of all women of childbearing age had only one, about 2.5 times higher than the percentage in 1986. In 2010, the fertility rate in Wufeng was as low as 1.09, appearing to indicate that further liberalization of the family planning policy would not result in an uncontrollable upward spike in birth rate.

But many demography experts are con­cerned that such tiny pilot projects are not representative of the general demographic situation in China. Professor Zhai Zhenwu, vice-president of the Population Society of China, told NewsChina that their research shows that 52 to 56 percent of urban women indicate that they would like to have two children. Zhai estimates that given China’s current economic, educational and health conditions, China’s real birth rate should be 2.4, much higher than the adopted official figure. Therefore, wholesale reform to allow two children may indeed result in a sudden population increase.

A Dilemma

Regardless of the doubtful reliability of these figures, it appears that the focus of China’s family planning policy has shifted from con­trolling the absolute size of the population to management of demographics, as the spec­ters of gender imbalance and an aging popu­lation loom increasingly large.

The 2010 census shows that the gen­der imbalance among newly born babies is widening, with 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls, 1.2 percent more than in 2000. In addition, the number of people aged 60 or above account for 8.87 percent of the total population, 2.93 percent more than 10 years before. Over the same period, the percentage of the population below age 14 has decreased by 6.29 percent from 22.89 to 16.60 percent.

But for many experts, the new pilot pro­gram is unlikely to have much effect on these statistics. While the One Child Policy is no doubt the cause of the gender imbalance, the problem is largely confined to rural ar­eas, where the preference for male offspring is much stronger. As the majority of child­bearing-age couples who are only children themselves live in urban areas, the impact of proposed liberalization will largely be limited to urban areas, making it inadequate to ad­dress the overall gender imbalance.

As to dealing with the aging population, it appears contradictory to try to minimize the population increase that would come with a more relaxed family planning policy while si­multaneously combating the aging problem; if the imbalance is to be neutralized, a large increase in some key demographics is cat­egorically necessary.

Professor Yuan Xin from Nankai Univer­sity, a commissioner with the SPFPC, argues that an aging population is inevitable, and China’s biggest problem is still the sheer size of its population. “Based on current calcula­tions, the pilot project may cause the fertility rate to increase to 1.8, which will only reduce the ratio of elderly people by 1 percent in 50 years.” According to Yuan, the proportion of people over 60 in China will reach 34 percent in 2050, by which time the overall popula­tion will be around 1.4 billion.

Other experts argue that faced with a huge population or an aging population, China must choose the lesser of two evils. Professor Wang Guangzhou from the Chinese Acad­emy of Social Sciences argues that China should choose to prevent the latter: “We have experience in dealing with a huge popula­tion, but we have none in dealing with an ag­ing population,” he told NewsChina. Accord­ing to his own estimates, if a two-child policy is introduced, China’s population would, at worst, not exceed 1.5 billion.

With incomplete and unreliable data across the board and dire consequences if any policy shift backfires, even choosing which provinces will carry out the pilot program is a delicate matter. According to Commissioner Yuan, the decision is out of the SPFPC’s hands, and now rests with the top leadership.

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