Chinese academics urge end to one-child policy

The policy came under renewed scrutiny last month after 22-year-old Feng Jianmei was forced to abort a seven-month foetus by local officials who claimed she had violated family-planning rules.

China’s family planning commission subsequently warned that “cruel” implementation of the policy would damage “the image of the [Communist] party and the nation.”

Recent years have seen growing public discussion of the issue, once a taboo.

In an editorial last month the People’s Daily newspaper said that a growing gender-imbalance, another consequence of the policy, was starting to threaten “social harmony and stability” with millions of men unable to find wives.

“Its far-reaching harm will be as much as the population expansion in the middle of the 20th century,” said the newspaper, often described as a mouthpiece for the views of China’s Communist Party.

Liang Zhongtang, a demographer from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the academics’ calls “showed more and more people have realised the need to change the one-child policy” and signalled a gradual shift away from the rule.

But Mr Liang said a sudden policy U-turn was unthinkable, particularly ahead of the once-in-a-decade leadership transition this autumn.

“I figure that in five to ten years time there will be a major change in the one-child policy [but] for now, I don’t see it coming – even as a pilot project.”

Mr Liang said he believed that growing discontent over issues such as forced abortion was a more urgent problem for Chinese authorities than the country’s ageing population.

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