China eases single child family planning policy

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 31

China eases single child family planning policy

NZPA-Reuter Peking China has started relaxing its rigid one-child family planning policy, particularly in the countryside where opposition has been strongest. Shen Guoxiang, spokesman for China’s State Family Planning Commission, was quoted by the “Peking Review” as saying the policy had served its purpose in limiting population growth. He described the onechild policy as an interim measure not applicable to some rural families in “special difficulties,” who could have two children, or members of ethnic minorities who could have three. Shen said provincial officials had been charged with meeting China’s goal of holding its 1.03 billion population 1.20 billion by the year 2000. They could weigh local economic, religous and cultural actors when deciding

on the approach to family planning. He said couples in the south-eastern province of Guangdong may now have a second child if their firstborn was a girl. Guangdong’s goal was to increase the number of two-child families and reduce the number of larger ones.

The one-child policy, reinforced by material incentives and penalties, has received support in urban areas but there has been opposition in the countryside.

Farmers prefer boys because after marriage boys remain with their own families whereas girls marry out. This pattern makes a girl a net economic loss, since after years of training, her adult labour will belong to her husband’s family. The Chinese press has highlighted a rise in female infanticide in rural areas that has conincided with the

re-establishment of family rather than communal farming. Rural parents have killed girls in favour of gaining another chance that their one permitted child will be a boy. Shen said "China’s population growth rate was still declining, with 18.62 births* per thousand in 1983 dropping to 17.5 last year.

In the prosperous coastal province of Jiangsu, one of the most densely populated areas of China, women aged 15 to 49 had an average of 1.44 children in 1983, compared with 4.61 in 1970 when the national family planning programme began. But with the population aged over 60 expected to grow from a current 8 per cent to about 20 per cent in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the Government is worried about the ability of the younger generation to support its elders.