China is facing a demographic crisis if more couples don’t take advantage of newly relaxed family planning rules, officials say.
In 2013, Chinese officials relaxed the country’s one-child policy in order to encourage a baby boom and reverse the tide of an aging population.
A man carries a child near Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China. (AP / Ng Han Guan)
But to date, barely a third of eligible couples have applied, citing the high costs of housing and schooling.
“In Beijing, raising a kid involves time, energy and money,” Dong Dexin, father to one daughter, told CTV News.
Dong Dexin with his family in Beijing
In 1980, Chinese officials introduced a one-child policy in order to control the country’s exploding population. Couples that had more than one baby were punished.
Now, China is facing an aging population with fewer available workers. The nation’s gender imbalance is also wide, as many couples preferred to have a boy under the one-child policy.
The new rules allow couples to have a second baby, if each parent was an only child. Rural couples can have two babies if the first one was a girl.
One mother, Bian Wei, jumped at the chance to have a second child.
“I was lonely as an only child, so I want two kids,” Wei told CTV.
She and her husband applied to have a second child, and recently had a baby boy, a brother for their young daughter.
Experts, however, say the relaxed rules don’t go far enough to reverse the aging population trend.
“Even a two-child policy can’t ease the aging problem, much,” demographics expert Yang Jue Hua told CTV.
With a report from CTV’s Asia Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer
