China's one-child policy is expected to be loosened in the coming years as experts recognize the implications of China's rapidly aging population. Some Chinese experts say five provinces will relax the policy in 2011, allowing two children for families where one spouse is an only child, and this may expand nationwide by 2013-2014. The one-child policy has accelerated labor shortages and distorted China's gender balance, with 119 boys born for every 100 girls last year. While the policy has been enforced through fines and forced abortions, gradual reform is seen as inevitable due to the economic and social costs of an aging workforce.

1. One-child policy's days are numbered
John Garnaut
September 13, 2010
Growth stunted ... a child wails while being vaccinated against measles at a clinic in Hefei, Anhui province. Population advisers say an
end to the policy is inevitable.
BEIJING: China's sometimes brutal one-child policy is expected to be loosened next year as policy
advisers come to grips with the implications of having one of the world's most rapidly ageing populations.
Chinese experts have told the Herald five provinces are to relax the policy next year and the trial may
spread nationwide by 2013 or 2014, at which point the country's working-age population will have
stopped growing and the policy's ''demographic dividend'' will have become a headwind.
Already the one-child policy has accelerated the onset and severity of labour shortages in coastal
provinces. And an associated rise in abortions and even infanticide has twisted the gender balance so that
last year there were 119 boys born for every 100 girls.
While no official announcement has been made, a number of family planning experts expect a pilot policy
will soon permit a second birth in families where at least one spouse is an only child. ''Next year they will
relax the policy in Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces,'' said He Yafu, an
independent demographic expert with connections to the Family Planning Commission.
''In 2012 I expect it will be extended to Shanghai, Beijing and other places, and I am personally optimistic
it will be extended to the whole country in 2013 or 2014.'' While recent media debate has focused on the
economic costs of an ageing population, Mr He said other problems stemmed from the fact the policy was
''forced''. In the early 1980s officials missed their birth targets - a consequence of failing to predict the
demographic ''echo'' of a baby boom that followed the great famine of the late-1950s - the policy morphed
into an instrument of tyranny in many areas. Graeme Smith, a rural China expert at the University of
Technology, Sydney, has traced the social and administrative costs of this policy in Anhui and Zhejiang
provinces.
''Family planning is a huge drain on resources and it shapes the coercive character of local government
even more than land disputes do,'' Dr Smith said.
''An agricultural officer who would be going out recommending new varieties of rice ends up chasing
down pregnant women or checking on IUD devices.'' While enforcing the policy has become a drag on
government morale, Dr Smith said it had also become an essential source of income as women paid large
sums in fines and bribes to officials for exceeding their birth quotas.
The one-child policy was officially implemented as a 30-year interim measure in 1980 but since then the
Family Planning Commission has entrenched itself as one of the most powerful
bureaucracies.Implementing the policy has become a leading criterion for official promotions.
Government advisers told the Herald that efforts to loosen the policy earlier this year were killed by the
commission. But they also said gradual reform and ultimately an end to the policy was inevitable.
After 2025 the working age population is expected to shrink by about 10 million people a year, placing
huge strains on the social security system and crimping the potential growth in gross domestic product.By
2050 India is expected to have grown to 1.75 billion people compared with China's 1.44 billion, according
to the Population Reference Bureau. China's current population is 1.34 billion, and India's is 1.19 billion.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/onechild-policys-days-are-numbered-20100912-1571g.html