The Chinese authorities released on Thursday the results of a 2006 survey that showed most women in China would like to have more than the one child they are currently allowed under the country’s strict one child per couple rule.
The Chinese government says the one child per couple rule has slowed down the country’s birth rate and helped millions of people to become wealthier. They are not going to change the rule.
The Chinese National Population and Family Planning Commission 2006 survey found that 71 per cent of Chinese women want two or more children. According to China Daily, vice minister of the Commission, Jiang Fan, said:
“The figure rose 7.6 percentage points between 2001 and 2006, which indicates a possible baby boom.”
Jiang said 83 per cent of the women in the survey said they wanted a son and a daughter, adding that many women thought an only child gets lonely and can become spoiled.
The current policy in China is that couples can only have one child, unless both partners are only children, in which case they can have two children. This is the same for ethnic minorities. The one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s, following a massive population rise from 542 to 963 million between 1949 and 1978. The result was a slowing in population growth of 1.2 per cent per year in 1978 to 0.52 per cent in 2007, said a report in Xinhua, a state run news agency.
At the end of 2007, China’s population was 1.32 billion; the government wants to keep this under 1.36 billion by the end of 2010.
The pressure to contain population growth however is being increasingly challenged as people live longer, the economy grows, and people’s quality of life improves, leading them to want more children.
But Li Bin, minister of the commission, said the government would be sticking to the existing plan to keep the birth rate low. She told a meeting on Thursday that:
“China’s family planning policy underpins the country’s economy and demographics.”
Other figures released by the National Population and Family Planning Commission at the same time showed that the trend of gender imbalance among newborn babies has slowed since 2005 but the problem is still “very grave”.
The 2005 figures cover 28 Chinese provinces and show that the imbalance of baby boys to baby girls fell in 17, rose slightly in seven, but was still a major problem in 4 provinces.
Overall, the ratio is still not even, but thought to be about 103 to 107 boys to every 100 girls, according to a comment vice minister Jiang Fan made at a conference.
According to Xinhua, the sex imbalance problem started in the late 1980s after ultrasound scans began to show the sex of fetuses, causing many women to abort females, in line with the cultural preference for male infants.
Jiang said the authorities were making strenuous efforts to crack down on illegal gender identification of fetuses and illegal abortions and this was the most likely reason for the improvement in the figures.
Sources: Xinhua.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD