China plans to ease 1-child policy, abolish labor camps

1970: Chinese population exceeds 800 million.

1975: China encourages couples to have one child and urges them to have no more than two.

1980: The Communist Party says every couple should have only one child. A new marriage law says couples are obligated to practice family planning.

1984: China adjusts the policy, allowing a second child for some families in rural areas and for couples who both are an only child.

2001: China decrees new laws to better manage the administration of the policy, including penalties for unapproved births. The laws allow local government to impose fines for additional children.

2013: China adds an exemption allowing two children for families in which one parent, rather than both, is an only child.

Sources: China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission and Xinhua News Agency

Associated Press

China’s leaders announced Friday the first significant easing of its one-child policy in nearly 30 years and moved to abolish its labor camp system — addressing deeply unpopular programs at a time when the Communist Party feels increasingly alienated from the public.

Beijing also pledged to open state-dominated industries wider to private competition and ease limits on foreign investment in e-commerce and other businesses in a sweeping reform plan aimed at rejuvenating a slowing economy.

The extent of the long-debated changes to the family planning rules and the labor camp system surprised some analysts. They were contained in a policy document issued after a four-day meeting of party leaders one year after Xi Jinping took the country’s helm.

“It shows the extent to which Xi is leading the agenda. It shows this generation of leaders is able to make decisions,” said Dali Yang, a China expert at the University of Chicago. “This is someone who’s much more decisive, who has the power, and who has been able to maneuver to make the decisions.”

Far from sweeping away all family planning rules, the party is now providing a new, limited exemption: It said families in which at least one parent was an only child would be allowed to have a second child. Previously, both parents had to be an only child to qualify for this exemption. Rural couples also are allowed two children if their first-born child is a girl, an exemption allowed in 1984 as part of the last substantive changes to the policy.

Beijing says the policy, which was introduced in 1980 and is widely disliked, has helped China by slowing population growth and easing the strain on water and other limited resources. But the abrupt fall in the birth rate is pushing up average age of the population of 1.3 billion people.

Demographers have argued that this has created a looming crisis by limiting the size of the young labor pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires.

“It’s great. Finally the Chinese government is officially acknowledging the demographic challenges it is facing,” said Cai Yong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Although this is, relatively speaking, a small step, I think it’s a positive step in the right direction and hope that this will be a transition to a more relaxed policy and eventual return of reproductive freedom to the Chinese people,” Cai said.

The government credits the one-child policy introduced in 1980 with preventing hundreds of millions of births and helping lift countless families out of poverty. But the strict limits have led to forced abortions and sterilizations by local officials, even though such measures are illegal. Couples who flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.

The update on birth limits was one sentence long, with details on implementation left to the country’s family planning commission. It was unclear what might happen to children born in violation of rules, whose existence have been concealed and thus lack access to services.

Cai said some experts estimate the policy change might result in 1 million to 2 million extra births in the first few years. But he said the figure might be significantly lower because of growing acceptance of small families.