China’s one-child rule turns into a time bomb
Couples that defy the rule can face big fines :
CHINA: China’s one-child policy has prevented almost half a billion
births but has turned into a demographic time bomb as the population
ages, storing up huge economic and social problems for the country. As
the world’s population hits the seven billion mark, straining the
earth’s resources, China can claim to have curbed its birth rate to
around 1.5 children per woman since the policy was introduced in 1979.
Without the birth limits, which no other country applies as
rigorously or on such a scale, the world’s most populous nation would
have hundreds of millions more mouths to feed than the 1.34 billion it
has now.
But from modern cities to remote villages, its implementation has
involved abuses from mass sterilisation to abortions as late as eight
months into the pregnancy. Baby girls have also been abandoned and
killed.
Couples who defy the rule can face fines amounting to several years’
salary, are liable to social services cut and even go to prison. Their
so-called “black children” have no legal status in China. Ethnic
minorities and farmers whose first child is a girl are exempt from the
restriction and in some areas, couples where both parents are only
children are also allowed to have a second baby.
But three decades on, demographers, sociologists and economists are
warning of a looming crisis as China becomes the only developing country
in the world to face growing old before it grows rich. China’s crisis is
approaching “incomparably faster” than in Europe, where fertility has
fallen very gradually over the last century, Paris-based demographer
Christophe Guilmoto told AFP.
AFP
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