Conflicting reports emerge about China’s ‘one couple, one child’ policy

January 25, 2010 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News

Reports have emerged that China may ease restrictions on its family planning policy, but China refutes the notion.

The Times Online is reporting that China’s capital, Beijing, has plans “yet to be formally implemented” for reducing restrictions on its family planning policies, allowing more people to have a second child.

China introduced harsh restrictions on families and how many children they could have more than 30 years ago. The policy has long been that families in which both the husband and wife are only children may give birth to a second child, and the family must wait to conceive until four years after the birth of the first.

Birth rates have fallen in China since the policy was implemented, and in some cases, the numbers aren’t well balanced. Peng Yuhua, deputy head of the Beijing Population and Planning Commission, told the Times Online that birth rates have been trending negatively, especially in rural Beijing.

“According to the natural law of stable human replacement, every woman should bear at least 2.1 children,” said Yuhua. “The number now in China has leveled at 1.8, while Beijing comes down to 1.0 right now.”

While the trend of urban, more well-to-do couples waiting later or opting not to have children continues, the rural community has tended to prefer more children to help tend the land, sometimes doing so illegally.

Contrary to the Times Online report, China Daily is reporting that the department responsible for family planning guidance in Beijing refutes the report that restrictions are being lifted.

“The family planning authority of Beijing said Monday that media report about the city considering loosening control on second-child was inconsistent with the facts,” said the China Daily.

A report apparently broke earlier today, stating that Peng Yuhua, deputy head of the Municipal Committee of Population and Family Planning, was discussing lifting some restrictions on child birth.

China Daily said that “the journalist who wrote the original false report had already apologized to the interviewee.”