Shanghai, July 25: Shanghai authorities are urging eligible couples to have a second baby, after years of following a one-child policy, amid concerns about a lack of young workers to support its ageing population.
Family planning officials will make home visits and offer financial advice to those wanting a second child, in a dramatic shift away from the 30-year priority of simply keeping the population down.
“We just hope more people can have a second child because for Shanghai, as a city which started family planning quite early, the process of ageing is fast,” said Zhang Meixin of the Shanghai population and family planning commission.
He said the authorities would not introduce new policies as such and stressed that the nationwide rules still stood. Officials have long feared that China cannot support a rising population already over 1.3 billion and not expected to peak until it reaches 1.5 billion in about 2033.
China’s one-child policy already includes a series of exemptions including for ethnic minorities and couples who are both only children. But in Shanghai, families will now be actively encouraged to use what was previously seen as a privilege.
The change reflects the differing needs of China’s modern cities and its countryside, and growing acknowledgement by officials that birth restrictions are a blunt tool with unwanted side-effects.
Earlier this year the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies warned that China would have more than 438 million over-60s by 2050. Each would have just 1.6 working-age adults to support them, compared with 7.7 in 1975.
The problem is particularly acute in Shanghai. Zhang said its fertility rate was 0.88 in 2008 – far below the national average of around 1.8 and that which is needed simply to keep the population at the same level.
Fertility rates tend to drop with economic development. China’s is still above that of Britain and many European countries.
Xia Xueluan, a professor of sociology at Peking University, said family planning had many advantages, but applauded the new policy. “They should have done this earlier, and it should be promoted all over the country, not just in Shanghai.”
But he added that additional incentives such as child benefit may be necessary to persuade urbanites to have more babies.
But while rural dwellers in particular chafe at restrictions and heavy-handed enforcement which has included forced abortions many in cities are used to the policy and seem largely indifferent, or like the idea of increasing their families but worry about the financial impact.
Resentment is often sparked by the variation in the policing of the rules rather than the law per se with many complaining that the rich are unaffected by fines that can cripple poorer households.
“I don’t want a second child. One is enough, and I hope it is a girl, said expectant mother Yu Nan, 25. “It is very nice to be the only child; you don’t need to share or grab things from others. You can have all your parents’ attention. My parents have brothers and sisters, but when my grandparents died they quarrelled over the legacy. That was horrible and hurtful. Being the only child, you won’t have those problems.”
-Agencies