According to data released by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning last week, only 10 percent of eligible couples are actually interested in giving their kid a brother or sister.

According to the data, 55,851 of qualified Beijing couples applied to have a second child as of October this year, accounting for just one-tenth of the estimated 550,000 eligible couples. In the country as a whole, 1.45 million couples applied to have a second baby by May of this year, accounting for just 13 percent of all eligible couples, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

At the end of 2013 China introduced a policy allowing couples to have a second child if one of the parents is an only child. A previous version required both parents to be the only children in their families.

However, China’s new, much more expansive, two child policy has not led to a surge in interest for second children. A recent CCTV poll found that 30 percent of parents said they are not willing to have a second child because they don’t have enough money.

Credit Suisse economist, Dong Tao, estimates that the cost of raising a child until adulthood in China is 499,200 yuan, or around 27,700 yuan a year, which doesn’t account for education expenses. “The high cost of raising a child is probably China’s new birth control,” said Dong.

Announced October 29, the end of the one child policy has yet to be ratified by the National People’s Congress, and remains law until such time.

According to Wang Peian, an official with the National Health and Family Planning Commission, China’s government estimates that with 90 million couples eligible to have two children, births will increase over the next few years, eventually peaking at over 20 million newborns a year.

Related:

• Guangdong’s New “Two-Child Policy” Off to a Rocky Start
• Shenzhen Documentary “Come On, Baby” Criticized for its “Painful” Childbirth

The post They Now Have The Chance, But Few Chinese Couples Want More Than One Kid appeared first on The Nanfang.

I work at a newspaper, but the biggest news in weeks broke while I was on my way home for the weekend Thursday night. In the 45-minutes it took to get from my office to my home, my Facebook, Twitter, and in-boxes were filled with two things – celebration over the end of China’s decades-old One-Child Policy and questions asking me what is really going on over here. So let me explain what China’s new Two-Child Policy actually means.

This is only a proposal.

The Two-Child Policy has not been approved by China’s government yet. Couples are not yet safe to have two children. It will still take several months for the policy to be accepted by the government and then it could take up to a year to be adopted nationwide. When the government eased restrictions two years ago, it took over a year for the policy to take effect here in Shenzhen. That means that if a woman was to get pregnant with an unapproved second child tomorrow, she would still be in violation of the law and have to pay a huge fine or risk her child being denied a hukou or be forced to terminate the pregnancy.

All Chinese couples can eventually have two children.

This is nothing to be happy about. First the #CCP would kill any baby after one. Now they will kill any baby after two. #ChinaOneChildPolicy

— Chen Guangcheng 陈光诚 (@iguangcheng) October 29, 2015

Two years ago, China already relaxed the One-Child Policy and announced that in families where one of the parents was an only child, the couple could have two children. The new policy will allow all couples to have two children.

But they have to apply for it.

You can’t just go out and get pregnant in China. You have to apply for permission, even for a first child. The same is now true of a second child – you have to ask the government if it is okay first.

You Can’t Undo Decades of Brainwashing Overnight

China’s insistence that families should only have one child pre-date the current One-Child Policy. Even though Mao initially encouraged families to have as many children as possible to spur the economy, by 1970 the government had serious concerns about the country’s population explosion and began “encouraging” people to marry later and have as few children as possible. The official One-Child Policy was enacted by 1980. Most people of child-bearing age today have only lived under the One-Child Policy.

The One-Child Policy isn’t simply a rule like “wear your seat belt” that most people begrudgingly accept. It has been pounded into their minds that having only one child is their moral and patriotic duty. To have more than one child would be to betray China. The punishments for violating the policy have been strict and brutal, creating a culture of fear of the government and authorities. Forced abortions are still commonplace today. Abortion under duress even more so. Families who violate the policy have to pay huge, life-crushing fines. Families who cannot pay the fines can be denied jobs and housing. Children born outside the policy are denied personhood, by which I mean they are denied a hukou or official registration. Hukou-less persons are denied schooling, healthcare, housing, jobs, bank accounts, train/bus/airplane tickets, and cannot marry. They don’t exist in their own country. They also can never leave because they cannot apply for a passport.

People in China also believe that having a second child is too expensive. When you only have one child, it is easy to think that that child has to have the best life – the best clothes, the best education, live in the best neighborhood, go to the best college, and so on. Because of this, many people believe their expenses for raising a second child will double. Instead of finding ways to cut costs by sending them to a less expensive school, many families who qualify for a second child opt out because of financial concerns.

After living your whole life in this kind of environment, it is difficult to suddenly change your way of thinking and have a second child.

Last year, when the restrictions were first eased, the government estimated that 90 million children could be born under the new policy. Only around 250,000 were. Here in Shenzhen, it was estimated that 25,000 couples qualified to have a second child. Only around 1,500 were born – in a city of 14 million people. The effect of a limited second-child policy was almost negligible. Some scholars estimate it will take 70-100 years for China’s birthrate to return to normal.

Current Second Children Born Outside the One-Child Policy Will Still Be Denied Personhood

There has been no indication that current second children who were born outside the One-Child Policy will be granted clemency. Their parents still broke the law and they and their children must suffer for that.

Any child born outside the Two-Child Policy Will Be Denied Personhood

Any child born outside the new two-child policy will still be denied a hukou.

Women Who Get Pregnant Outside China’s Family Planning Polices Are Punished

China’s Family Planning Policies go beyond the One-Child Policy. In China, women who get pregnant out of wedlockcan be legally fired from their job. Women who have a child out of wedlock can be denied housing. Women who have a child out of wedlock are subject to the same fines as couples who have children outside the One-Child Policy. Chinese women who are not married are not allowed to store their eggs for future fertility treatments.

And, of course, children born to women who are not married can also be denied personhood.

Just to be clear, men cannot be fired from their jobs nor are they fined for having a child out of wedlock.

Nothing Has Changed

Long story short – this isn’t good enough. China’s family planning policies are still in violation of basic human rights. Do not give China any kudos for this. Only when China ends all of its family planning policies and every person in China is recognized as a human being will it be good enough.

The post China Still Has the Most Brutal and Backward Family Planning Policy in the World appeared first on The Nanfang.

China’s one child policy has long been seen as an oppressive regulation that infringes on basic human rights, however exceptions to the law have long existed for certain families, such as those from certain areas or belonging to ethnic minorities. Some predicted a baby boom once the policy was lifted on a larger scale, but that hasn’t happened.

A CCTV poll found 30 percent of parents said they are not willing to have a second child because they don’t have enough money. Of those who want to have a second kid, providing companionship for their first born was the top reason for doing so (40 percent).

China’s one-child policy mandated children to have only one child at most, however the relaxation allows any couples with a parent who is an only child to have a second kid.

China’s only-child generation is growing up with some substantial burdens. Without any other siblings, a single child will be responsible for at least four elderly adults who will need care in their old age (father, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law).

China’s elderly population is growing fast and putting more demands on social welfare and medical services. In Shanghai, a third of the registered population is classified as elderly.

Photo: CCTV

The post China’s One Child Policy is Relaxed, but Little Interest in a Second Child Anyway appeared first on The Nanfang.

Some applicants are finding it difficult to prove that they are the single child of a family in a process said to often reject submitted documents. In other cases, applicants complain that different government bureaucracies require different certificates, leading to frayed nerves. One of the biggest problems is that the new policy was introduced on a national level three months before Guangdong province passed the new law. So which one applies?

Expectant parents are left with a myriad of questions, including:

There has been a lapse of time between the implementation of the new childbirth policy on a national scale and here in Guangdong province. If I have a child within this period of time, will I be fined?

Applicants to raise a second child require parents to provide a certificate of being a single child, but is there a specific format for these requirements?

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed this resolution at the end of December of last year, while the law came into practice in Guangdong at the end of March of this year. If I have a [second] child in the time from January to March, will I be fined?

It seems like parents are keen to cash in on this “promotion”. The news headline on the first baby born in Guangdong under the new policy on March 28 simply said, “A Discount of RMB 300K”. (link broken, cache here)

The excitement behind the change is why it’s great to have experts on hand to help explain things to the layperson. There is also particular confusion in Guangdong because we’re three months behind the rest of the country in passing the law. Under the title “Problems Leave Many with a Headache”, this article tries to solve the mystery by interviewing two experts, which seems to be one too many.

Li Ruzhang, Department head of the provincial division of the standing committee for administrative law of the national People’s Congress, says:

According to my understanding of the law, any briths to have occurred after the passing of the resolution of the Standing Committee should be considered legal. Although the passing of this law in Guangdong was late by three months, but the resolution of the National People’s Congress affects every citizen throughout the entire country.

Zheng Zizhen disagrees. The sociologist and former director for the demographic research institute of the Academy of Social Sciences says that each case must be evaluated separately:

In the eyes of the law, it makes sense to consider that a national policy would go into effect around the country as a whole; however, we should still try to specifically try to determine when is the proper transition period…(Even if the cut-off time was Dec 28 of last year,) what if someone was off by this date by three days? Then what do you do? How do you deal with this situation? That’s why I think it’s best to act in accordance with the law.

As with all bureaucracies, these two people are completely correct.

This new policy is expected to bring an additional 1.5 to 2 million births to Guangdong province, and is already starting speculation as to how this new demographic will affect the economy and which specific industry.

Despite waiving the penalty for extra births outside the traditional one-child policy, 60% of Guangdong respondents to an online poll state that they would not choose to have a second child due to its high cost.

Photo: Yesky

The post Guangdong’s New “Two-Child Policy” Off to a Rocky Start appeared first on The Nanfang.

The problem lies in the fact that China now has an army of single children, each with two aging parents. It doesn’t take long to see where this is headed: an expensive and large elderly population with a relatively smaller tax-paying base to support them. That’s why Guangdong Province is asking Beijing to relax the One Child Policy.

Currently, many jurisdictions in China allow two only-children who are married to have more than one child. What Guangdong wants to do is allow a couple to have more than one child if only one of the spouses is an only child. As the South China Morning Post reports (behind a paywall), this would make Guangdong the first province to permit this arrangement and also curb the number of pregnant women who are flocking to Hong Kong in increasing numbers to deliver their babies:

Voices calling on the central government to rethink its population policy have been growing. Many economists are worried that China’s phenomenal economic growth could be slowed down by a rapidly ageing society, a dwindling labour pool and mounting pressure on the social security system.

In an interview published by the province’s official newspaper, Nanfang Daily, Guangdong family planning chief Zhang Feng said the province had tendered an official application to Beijing to run a pilot version of an adjusted one-child policy.

Guangdong’s population reached 104 million last year, surpassing Henan as the nation’s most populous province.

The SCMP also points out that with rising living costs (and soaring inflation), many parents might not choose to have a second child anyway. That would mimic developed countries, where higher education rates and increasing wealth has resulted in a decline in birth rates.

The post Guangdong Wants to Ditch the One Child Policy (Sort Of) appeared first on The Nanfang.