China to Continue Birth-Rate ControlBy ANDREW BATSON, January 13, 2007
BEIJING -- Concluding a three-year review of its controversial population policies, China says it has no choice but to continue controlling birth rates despite increasing population imbalances.
The government acknowledged that its one-child policy will produce a surge in the number of single men and elderly -- trends with worrisome implications for social stability and government finances. But the nation can't support a population much larger than the current 1.3 billion, according to the review.
State controls on childbearing have "eased the pressure of population growth on the economy, society, resources and the environment," the National Population and Family Planning Commission said in a report published this past week, although that "relationship is still strained, and is bringing many serious challenges."
The government wants to keep the birth rate low, at the current average of 1.8 children per woman. The report says this will ensure the population will rise only slowly in coming years and peak at 1.5 billion people after 2033 -- and then start declining.
China's family-planning policies were launched in 1973, in response to a wave of births that threatened to send population growth out of control. Now, the government officially "encourages late marriage and childbearing and advocates one child per couple."
The restriction on births is applied most strictly on women living in cities, and less so elsewhere. But local governments have leeway in implementing policy, which has sometimes led to abuses when they try to meet their family-planning targets.
The commission's report called for greater "innovation" in family planning and for the creation of a social-security system for the elderly in rural areas, so that couples don't feel they must have children to provide for them.
The population controls have brought their own set of unintended problems. Because the one-child policy effectively means that each generation will be smaller than the one preceding it, the elderly will have to be supported by a shrinking number of younger people. That is becoming a challenge for a country trying to expand a rudimentary social-welfare system.
Another consequence has been the creation of a gender imbalance. If a Chinese couple can have only one child, they usually prefer to have a boy. As a result, births have become heavily skewed to boys. In 2005, there were 118.6 boys born for every 100 girls.
That means that by 2020, there will 30 million more men than women in the 20-to-45-year age group, the report says, which is likely to bring greater "social disorder." This gender imbalance may push increasing numbers of Chinese men to move to other countries in search of partners.
