The Child in Time: Rethinking China's One-Child Policy
IN MARCH, Yang Zhizhu was fired as a law lecturer in Beijing for having more than one child. He knew the risk, but he badly wanted to father a boy. His story is not rare in a country which for 30 years has told couples to settle for a single child and has used draconian measures to limit births. But Mr Yang’s high-profile rebellion has won sympathy even in the state-controlled press.
Rumblings of discontent over the one-child policy have been growing louder, stirred by debate over whether it is needed now that the first children born under it face the prospect of caring for an ever-increasing number of pensioners. A report last month by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a leading government think-tank, said officials were seriously overestimating the fertility rate (the number of children an average woman can expect to have in her lifetime). Rather than suppress the rate, suggested the report, the government should try to lift it.
