China Has Avoided Rampant Population Growth

More Births?

Today, as the birth policy relaxes, the question is: how many couples out of the national total of 20 million with either party as an only child are willing to have two children? Li Lei, aged 32, works for an IT company in Beijing as a project manager. He has a daughter aged one and a half. “We’ll certainly have a second child,” Li said. “As the only child, my daughter is lonely. I hope she will have a sibling in the future as company. It will be good for her character development and mental health,” he added.

A survey headed by Zhai Zhenwu, dean of the School of Sociology and Population Studies at Renmin University of China, found that about 50 to 60 percent of the couples eligible to have two children under the new policy are willing to have a second child.

Cheng Gang, aged 32, belongs to the group not planning to have a second child. Although both he and his wife are only children, he affirmed that he would not have another child. He said, “One more child would be a strain on our energy and money, and will, naturally, lower the quality of our life and affect our work at the same time.”

Yin Zhigang, deputy director of the Beijing Administrative College’s Beijing Population and Development Research Center, held that the relaxation of China’s one-child policy would lead to a short-term rebound of the birth rate, but in the long run, it would not see a big upswing. “Restricted by practical considerations like the increase in child-rearing costs, many young couples will not blindly choose to have two children,” he said. He also pointed out that due to rising living and education costs, a mindset of having less children has formed among couples of childbearing age.