First Beijing, then Shanghai and soon Nanjing? All over China the one-child policy is being relaxed to allow more people to have two children, but is this necessarily a good thing? On 21st February 2014 Beijing announced the changes, which allow parents where only one partner is a single child to have two children; previously only parents that were both single children were allowed to have two offspring.
Shanghai in traditional fashion of imitating the capital followed suit four days later, on 25th February, thereby becoming the sixth region in China to loosen population control. Latest reports suggest that by 2015 the Two-Child Policy could be introduced nationwide after a report by the China Development Research Foundation, which has close ties to central government, has been urging to lift the policy introduced 35 years ago. The paper further suggested to drop all birth-rate restriction by 2020.
The measures have been taken in order to combat the shrinking working population and phenomenon of overaging that puts great pressure on Chinese society. Since in Chinese culture it is common for the children to take care of their parents when they reach old age, instead of shipping them off to retirement homes as cold-hearted foreigners do, a Chinese married couple now finds themselves having to care fore four elderly people and one offspring. Due to a lack of siblings to share the burden the pressure on the single-child generation is incredibly large. The set-up has also affected young Chinese mobility and freedom, as they feel an obligation to stay in the same town as their parents in order to take care of them later in life, rather than going out into the world and exploring other places. This creates further problems for Chinese relationships, as students who meet partners at a university not in their hometown see themselves confronted with the dilemma of whether to go to another city and “abandon” their parents. That this is a common phenomenon is illustrated by the fact that a popular Chinese saying goes “graduation season is a time of break ups” (毕业季就是分手时). From the outset Chinese people only have a very limited window of time, as they do usually not start dating seriously until university and are expected to marry in their mid-twenties. Adding to that the fact that their relationships formed at university now have a very small chance of survival, they might find themselves single at 23 with a minimal amount of time to find a marriage partner.
However, the shift in policy creates another set of problems. Current estimates suggest that with introduction of the policy the growth rate will be supplemented by an additional 54,000 people annually in the first five years, and 40,000 more people per year after that in Beijing. As a consequence, the capital, which is already infamous for its overcrowded streets and unimaginable masses of people, will be under even more strain than it is already. Especially kindergartens and primary schools will feel the pressure in the coming years, as they have to deal with a drastic increase in student numbers. The same goes of course for Shanghai with its currently 14,35 million inhabitants. Closer to home, the current number of newborn babies in Jiangsu is 780,000 to 820,000 per year. After the new policy is implemented, the province could experience a baby boom beginning 2014, with an annual increase of 110,000 to 180,000 newborns, peaking in 2018.
Furthermore, the one-child policy has actually contributed to no small extent to the educational advancement of women in China. Depending on how open-minded the future generation of Chinese parents is, a reversal of the policy might affect education levels amongst women. Due to the preference of males caused by Confucian values, in families with more than one child the boy would be favoured over the girl, especially when it came to the financial question of sending children to university. Hence, many women of the pre-Deng era were denied higher education as their male siblings received preferential treatment. With the one-child policy parents suddenly saw themselves facing a sonless reality, in which case their financial assets were poured into the daughter’s education instead. Research has proven that girls in urban areas not only enjoy better educational opportunities than their peers in families with more than one child, but that their aspirations are higher too. The question that poses itself is whether the last 30-odd years have done enough for female emancipation to pre-empt a return of strong male favouritism.
One final thought remains, despite the fact that the Chinese government is offering more freedom to its people to become a multi-child household recent reports indicate that a surprising number of people might not make use of their newly-acquired freedom; especially in urban areas where traditional attitudes propagating “more children, more happiness” have long lost their influence and higher living costs make having children comes at a high price. A survey conducted in October 2013 by the Nanjing family planning commission showed that approximately 40 percent of Nanjing residents who qualified for a second child under the previous two-single-parents policy do not desire another offspring. Reasons cited for this trend were the high cost of raising children; at an average expense of ￥2,000 per month, per child excluding education many parents are simply unable to afford raising a second child. Other reasons for parents to stick to singleton children, as they are now being called, is the fact that having two children would be two exhausting. Chinese dedication to their children is nothing short of self-abandonement and so it unsurprising that the thought of going through that twice is daunting.
Whether or not Chinese people will make use of the new government policy will only become obvious after another couple of years have passed and research has inspected closely population growth and the state of the nation. In the meantime, Chinese can rejoice in the fact that at least they get to chose; representing a further step in China’s steady march to complete opening-up.
