China to Change One-Child Policy?

Taking clues from the Malthusian logic, China successfully enacted the One-Child policy to control the burgeoning population. However, over the years, this compulsion is showing more ill-effects than the benefits. There is a news that China is muling over a change in this policy. May be China look at her neighbor - India. In India, sometime ago there was a debate as to how to reign in India's population growth. India took the route of non-coercive policy measures for achieving the same result. In India, the process of slowing down population growth is painfully slow - it relies more on public education, awareness creation and most importantly woman empowerment. However, one benefit of this slow progress is that there is a lot of progressive fine tuning happens and this is beneficial in long run. Anyways, China is now waking up to the unintended consequences of a coercive regime. Read on...

"Under the current mandate, Beijing limits most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two to conserve scarce resources. Critics say the policy has led to forced abortions, sterilisations and a dangerously unbalanced sex ratio due to a traditional preference for male heirs that has prompted countless families to abort female foetuses.Southern China's Hunan province has had nearly 1,400 cases in the past three years involving illegal use of ultrasound to determine a foetus sex and abortions of female foetuses, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.More than 1,100 people received party discipline or administrative punishment, the report said. Seventy-five doctors lost their licences.Potential changes in the family planning policy also stem from concerns about China's aging population, with those aged 60 or older expected to top 200 million by 2015 and 280 million by 2025, according to the government."

China reviewing one-child policy - World - smh.com.au