BEIJING – In late 2015, China announced an end to its infamous 35-year-old “One Child” policy , which was aimed at curbing the exploding population of the nation of more than 1.3 billion people.
Now, the initial data on the experiment to allow married couples to have two children has come in, and the Chinese government is touting it as a success.
China is preparing to end its controversial “one-child” policy, allowing couples to have two children. CBSN’s Contessa Brewer reports on the new…
According to the Communist Party’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC,) there were 17.86 million births in China last year, an increase of 7.9 percent from the previous year.
“It demonstrates that the universal second-child policy came in time and worked effectively,” said Yang Wenzhuang, a division director of the NHFPC in a press release .
Like many countries with a low birth rate , China was concerned about how to care for its aging population, as there were a dearth of young worker to help support them, as well as a gross gender imbalance , because so many female babies were abandoned or aborted in the patriarchal society.
