China's one-child policy and its far-reaching effects

CHINA - The question of relaxing control over family planning policy is always a hot discussion in China.

With the end of the Third Plenary Session of 18th CCPC, the discussion has reached the "first step" to comprehensively deepen reform.

But there is few who want to have a second child with the current lack of the security over issues such as housing, medicine and education.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made family planning as a basic national policy to control the increase of population on March 13, 1982.

According to the policy, national cadres and workers, urban dwellers, except with prior approval in special situation, can only give birth to only one child.

Family planning has been effective but the extra-birth problem is still a main cause of poverty in some rural areas where son-preference is rampant.

The result of the family planning is the 4-2-1 situation: four old citizens, two middle-aged, one young which increase the pressure on the children to look after their elders.

The disadvantages of the family planning policy are visible after 30 years: the sharp decrease of reproductive rate, the low proportion of the young, the increasing proportion of the elderly, leading the aging of population and workforce in China.

The figures for the accidental death of the young hit more than 10 million from 1975 to 2010, which means the 20 million parents would lose their only child, their only support in old age.

This would lead to the empty-nest elderly with one child which become a serious problem now.

Propaganda of ideas such as of "More children more fortune " and "Raise children for old age" are also not popular today. People are more realistic and would determine how many children to have according to their abilities.