The Time Has Come for China to Relax and Loosen Its One Child Policy

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping, leader of the Communist Party of China introduced China’s one-child policy (OCP), which limits couples to having one child in order to reduce China’s population growth. This policy was created to alleviate environmental, social, and economic problems in China.  After more than 20 years of implementation, the policy has met its primary objective of slowing down China’s population growth. Chinese authorities report that the policy was a huge achievement, precluding at least 250 million births since its implementation (BBC, 2000).  On the other hand, there are also profound socio-economic and demographic consequences of this policy. Presently, the negative effects of the China’s population control policy have overcome the positive effect that this policy brings. This policy have deteriorates China’s population quality, depreciate China’s economic potential and result in unbalance sex ratio. Chinese government has declared that it will remain its OCP through the 2006-2010 five year planning period. Therefore, Chinese government should review and loosen its OCP for its next Five-Year Plan Period.

One of the main reasons for implementation of OCP is to improve China’s economic performance. Currently, the economy of the People's Republic of China is the third largest in the world, after the United States and Japan (2008) with a nominal GDP of US$4.91 trillion (2009) (Bloomberg, 2010). It may be argued that OCP could play an important role for China’s economic success. The decrease in population growth has improved people life standard and reduced the numbers of poverty – a key factor in China’s exceptional economic achievement. Some dispute that economic success has done as much as the OPC to decrease population growth. China’s fast growing economy attracts people from rural area to move into urban area where there are a lot of economic opportunities. At urban area, the cost of living and expense of raising a child is high. When costs and the expense of having children in urban areas increase, many couples choose not to have children. Susan Greenhalgh, a China policy reports, “Rapid socioeconomic development has largely taken care of the problem of rapid population” (Ruwitch, 2007). Based on this argument, there is something wrong in the current OCP policy because the policy restrict the urban couple to have one child while, in some rural area, couples are allowed to have a second child if their first is girl. If Chinese Government really wants to reduce its population growth, rural couples are the one that should be targeted because based on evaluation of the fertility of Chinese women during 1990-2000 (Wang, 2003) reports that the total fertility rate, which is defined as the mean number of children born per woman, at rural area are much higher than urban area. Chinese authorities’ decision to fine and tax couple that has more than one child is not a proper solution to do because it is very irony and contradict with its OCP policy that promote economic growth and to increase life standard. Couples with more children need more income to raise more children, if the government imposes high taxes and fines to this group, it will affect their life standard and financial condition and consequently China’s economy will deteriorate.

China will get a lot of benefits if the country has more population. Increase in markets, buyer power, tax base and labor pool will secure China’s economic success. Claiming overpopulation, as a problem for country economy is not acceptable because there are some countries that far more populated than China but still can maintain and achieve tremendous economic success. For example, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Taiwan has a population density of 1,460 per square mile, while China has a population density of 360 per square mile (LoBaido, 2000). In spite of that, Taiwan's per capita gross domestic product is $ 29,800, while China's is $ 6,700 (Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 2009). Ultimately, China should relax its OCP because its hinder China true economic potential.

It has been reported that OPC have help to increase Chinese life standard. Parents can concentrate more for the only child and provide him/her with a perfect education, medicine, shelter and love. Some may argued that low population density would make it easier for the populace and the government to improve the educational quality of the entire Chinese population, while a larger population further jeopardizes it. On the surface, it looks like OCP have met its objective and should be maintain. Essentially, on the long run, OCP have brought negative impact towards the socio-economic and demographic consequence. OCP have negatively impact China’s population quality.  By 2001, there were a total of 80 million single children in China. These people are usually considered “self-centered, individualistic, less socially responsible, and less able to care for themselves and their families” (Xizhe, 2004). These outcome clearly shown that OCP have only successful to reduce the population growth but not improving China’s population quality. Falbo, 1984 hypothesizes that “being an only child has an ill effect on the development of personality in contrast with being a child with siblings” (Tseng, Tao, Hsu, Qiu, Li, & Deborah, 2000). In order to overcome these negative social impacts, China should relax its OCP to able couple to have more than one child. As mention before, relaxation of OCP also will bring economic prosperous to China.  These arguments clearly shown that there are a lot of positive impact if China takes action to relax OCP.

Another population quality issue that concern with OCP is aging population. In 2000, there were 88.11 million elderly (people over 65 years old) (Xizhe, 2004). The rapid decrease in the birth rate, combined with high life expectancy, has led to “an increasing proportion of elderly people and an increase in the ratio between elderly parents and adult children” (Hesketh & Xing, 2005). Even though ratio of older and younger people in China are lower than those in most industrialized countries such as Japan and Europe, China don’t have sufficient amount of pension coverage to support approximately 70 percent of elderly people (Sun, 1998). In China, pensions are only given for government workers or certain big company. This fast aging of the population have negatively impact China’s socio-economic development. If this trend continues, China will lose a huge amount of labor pool and this will put China economy in a serious position. Furthermore, there are huge burden on Chinese government to support elders people because these elders people only have one child and things will get worse if the child is a girl because in Chinese culture, when a girl is married, she have more responsible toward her husband than her parents. Relaxation of OCP will ensure that elders people have someone to took care of them and stabilize the imbalance population age.

With the implementation of the OCP, a disproportion in the sex ratio at birth began a rise that has become progressively more unbalanced over the previous two decades. The most current survey reported a sex ratio at birth of 119.2 boys to every 100 girls (Feng, 2005). Advancement in ultrasound technology that enables pregnant women to see the development and gender of fetus in embryo has led to sex-selective abortion. Since Chinese are allowed only one child, most of them prefer to have a son rather than a daughter because it is cultural norms in China that value male children over female children (Goodkind, 1999). While sex-selective abortion is controversial, some critics have support it as a process to empower women and enhance familial happiness. For example, bioethicist Jacob M. Appel has written, "Pre-implanting diagnosis offers the promising of increasing the number of children who are loved and wanted. I look forward to the day when every son knows that his parents wanted a son and every daughter knows that her parents wanted a daughter" (Appel, 2009). However, sex-selective abortion in China has negatively impact the social and demographic factor and may bring a lot of problem to Chinese population. The deficiency of women may have increased mental health problems and socially disturbing behavior among men and has left some men unable to marry and have a family (Tuljapurkar S, 1995). The scarcity of women in China has resulted in kidnapping and trafficking of women for marriage and increased numbers of commercial sex workers, with a possible consequential rises in “human immunodeficiency virus infection and other sexually transmitted diseases” (Tucker, Henderson, & Wang, 2005). These results have obvious implications for decisions about future population policy. A relaxation in the policy could be considered in the near future to prevent abnormal sex ratio.

Giovanni Botero, an Italian priest and diplomat (1540-1617), highlights that, "the greatness of a city rests on the multitude of its inhabitants and their power,” China are able to become one of the most influential countries in the world is because the huge amount of population that China has; China’s large population has driven its economic success. The implementation of OCP does help China to control its overpopulation issue but today, the policy is not relevant anymore because its hinder China true economic potential, downgrade China’s population quality and result in abnormal sex ratio. These problems jeopardize China future and put its citizen in a serious position. Finally, it is strongly recommended that China to relax and loosen its OCP for its next Five-Year Plan Period.

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