China blog #78
I have written about China and the OCP before. Here is an excellent article by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on the failed 'One-Child Policy.'
This has caused a gender imbalance where boys were favoured over girls and many women opted for abortions when pregnant with a girl. Other problems coming down the tracks for the worlds most populous nation is how to cope with an aging population.
After 36 years of enforcing this policy, the Communist government eventually eased it to a two children policy three years ago. They are now actively encouraging families to have more children. However, in modern-day China, it is now an economic issue as generally, couples can't even afford one child, let alone two. As one person pointed out that it's not necessarily an issue about feeding children its more about giving them a good standard of living and to be able to provide for them when they eventually get married.
The irony of the OCP is that when it was first implemented that the countries birth rate was already in decline.
No comments:
Post a Comment