The country is facing a demographic crisis, thanks to a declining birthrate and shrinking workforce, which is likely to significantly hamper its economic future, but most experts are skeptical boosting the child limit again will reverse the trends.<\/b>
\nIn a significant policy change aimed at countering the country\u2019s declining birthrates, rapidly aging population, and shrinking workforce, China will now permit married couples to have up to three children. The shift, announced by the nation\u2019s ruling Communist Party on Monday, comes less than six years after raising the nationwide limit to two children. But that policy change failed to boost China\u2019s birthrate or stave off a looming demographic crisis. Now, in addition to raising the limit again, China\u2019s government says it will offer \u201csupporting measures,\u201d possibly including maternity leave and greater workplace protections for women. The timing and specifics of the new policies remain unclear, however. Last year\u2019s once-a-decade census in China revealed both that the country\u2019s birthrate had fallen for the fourth straight-year \u2014 dropping 15 percent from 2019 to 2020 \u2014 and that the percentage of the population which was over the age of 60 had risen from 13.3 percent in 2010 to 18.7 percent in 2020, while the working population (those aged 15 to 59) dropped from roughly 70 percent to 63 percent. The decade had seen China\u2019s slowest population growth since the 1950s, the census indicated. The fact that men outnumber women in the country, and that single mothers aren\u2019t afforded the same support from the government as married couples, isn\u2019t helping either. The decision to raise the child limit was made during a meeting of the Communist Party Politburo on Monday which was chaired by president Xi Jinping, according to the Xinhua state news agency. The Party also reiterated that it would gradually raise the retirement age (it has one of the world\u2019s lowest retirement ages) and boost benefits for its seniors, though again, without getting into specifics. The announcement didn\u2019t seem to impress many inside China, the South China Morning Post reported: Many users on Weibo, China\u2019s equivalent of Twitter, said they did not think the policy change would encourage couples to have more children, given steep real estate prices, long working hours and the intense competition and high prices for education in China. In an online poll by state news agency Xinhua,28,000 out of 31,000 respondents said they \u201cwould not consider at all\u201d having three children. About 1,600 respondents said they would be willing before the poll was removed on Monday. That maps onto what BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell has heard: I have interviewed many young Chinese couples about this subject and it is hard to find those who want bigger families these days. Generations of Chinese people have lived without siblings and are used to small families – affluence has meant less need for multiple children to become family-supporting workers, and young professionals say they\u2019d rather give one child more advantages than spread their income among several kids. Indeed, most experts who responded to the news on Monday seem skeptical that allowing an additional child will do enough to reverse the national demographic trends. Many other countries are experiencing birthrate and population-growth declines, and without having imposed draconian limits on how many kids people can have. Yi Fuxian, a specialist in China\u2019s demographics, said the timing of the announcement so soon after the census summary suggested the detailed data to come could be extremely worrying. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s because the real population data is too scary. Even if they have not published it, it probably frightened the decision makers,\u201d Yi said. CNN Business\u2019 Laura He adds that China\u2019s declining population growth is expected to have major implications for its economy: Experts have said China\u2019s labor force will peak in the next few years before shrinking by about 5% over the next decade.\u2026 That could mean trouble for the big economic policy objectives set by President Xi Jinping. He has laid out ambitions for China\u2019s GDP to double by 2035. And while some forecasters say China could surpass the United States as the world\u2019s biggest economy by the end of this decade, it has a much bigger gap to close in terms of prosperity. China\u2019s per capita GDP stands at $17,000, compared with a US figure of more than $63,000, according to the International Monetary Fund. China\u2019s family planning restrictions date to 1980, when the party first imposed a \u201cone-child\u201d policy to slow population growth and bolster the economic boom that was then just beginning. Officials often employed brutal tactics as they forced women to get abortions or be sterilized, and the policy soon became a source of public discontent.\u2026 The chorus of voices urging the party to do more has only grown in recent years. The central bank said in a starkly worded paper last month that the government could not afford to keep restricting procreation. Already, some local officials in some areas had been tacitly allowing couples to have three children. The party\u2019s reluctance to abandon its right to dictate reproductive rights points to the power of such policies as tools of social control. Even as the country has struggled to raise birthrates, the authorities in the western region of Xinjiang have been forcing women of Muslim ethnic minorities, like the Uyghurs, to have fewer babies in an effort to suppress their population growth. A full reversal of the rules could also be seen as a repudiation of a deeply unpopular policy that the party has long defended. And in addition to the both mandated and cultural shift away from larger families, the bottom line for many potential parents in China appears to be an economic one, and it remains unclear if the government will or can do enough to address that. As one Weibo user put it in a popular post on Monday, \u201cI\u2019m not buying three Rolls-Royces not because there\u2019s any restriction, but because they\u2019re expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n