For the five year plans, i.e. from the year 2006-2010, China has announced that it would continue with the policy of having one child per couple. This means that each couple is limited to having only one child in China. Shocking? That’s the law in china.
This “one child law” was established by Deng Xiaoping, a Chinese leader in 1979 with the motive of limiting the population growth of communist China. At the time of the establishment of such policy or law, it was designated as a temporary measure to curb the rapidly increasing population growth in China. However, it did not remain as a temporary measure only; the policy continues to be implemented even decades after the formulation.
According to this law, a couple can have only one child. Hence, for subsequent pregnancies, dines, sterilization or abortions are forced on the mother.
This rule is not applied evenly all over China; it is only in the urban areas, groups like the ethnic Han Chinese are encompassed by this rule whereas citizens living in rural areas of China are not encompassed by the rule.
This rule of one child policy by China law is quite efficient and has reduced China’s population growth by as much as 300 million people in the first twenty years of implementation! For a country whose population is estimated to be at 1.3 billion, that is quite a lot of reduction!
However, this rule does not only have advantages, it comes along with its setbacks as well. One such being the disdain for female babies due to this rule. Measures such as abortion, infanticide, abandonment and even neglect have been reported to occur to the infants who are female. Such family planning law has brought about disparate ration of female and male infants.
Recently, a lot of changes have been introduced to this law, because of millions of sibling-less people and also to prevent too much decrease in the population. It is now reported that there is a special provision for couples without siblings, which is so because the law forbade their parents from having a second child. Now, these sibling-less couples can have two children instead of just a single child.
In order to make sure that the law is followed correctly, China has supplied its citizens with more education regarding alternative birth control methods other than abortion, IUDs and sterilization. The government also provided ample support to the citizens.
Zhang Weiqing, the Minister of the State Commission of Population and Family Planning stated that in the eleventh Five-Year Plan Period (2006-2010) the same one child policy will follow and is likely to continue indefinitely for the nation’s welfare through population growth.