China should have three-child policy, lawmaker says before Parliament session

Couples in China should be allowed to have a third child, a lawmaker has proposed, arguing it is the only way to stem a worrying slide in the birth rate despite the scrapping of the one-child policy two years ago. The number of births fell sharply in 2017 after an increase in 2016, a year after the one-child policy was discontinued following nearly 40 years of strict implementation. Experts have said China is looking at a “gloomy demographic” situation in future, raising questions whether the current two-child policy was implemented too late. It means a steady decline in the number of people in the working age and the government having to spend millions more to take care of the increasing number of elderly in society. Zhu Lieyu, a member or deputy of the National People's Congress (NPC), China’s Parliament, which convenes on Monday, agrees with experts who have sounded the alarm. “There is a big gap between the effect and expectation of the second-child policy, as it did not result in a population blowout, but a decline in China's birth rate,” Zhu, a lawyer from the southern province of Guangzhou, was quoted as saying by online news platform jiemian.com. Zhu has argued in his proposal that a moderate rise in population will help China resolve the problem of an ageing society by upgrading its economy. “The essence of future competition among countries is competition in technology, economy and population, and the fundamental competition is the competition of talent. Thus, the fertility rate of a country is very important,” Zhu was quoted as saying. There were 630,000 fewer births in 2017 than the year before, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said earlier this year. A total of 17.23 million babies were born in 2017, declining from 17.86 million in 2016, and the birth rate dropped from 1295 to 1243 per 100,000 population. The NBS said the decline was because of 2.5 million fewer couples having first children. Experts have even suggested that what China needs is to abandon the family planning policy to encourage more births. Questions, however, remain whether Zhu’s idea of a third child will work as one reason why couples are not opting for a second child is the increasing costs of rearing children. A recent report by the Shanghai Women's Federation showed that more than half of households with only one child did not want a second. Beyond demographics, the cost of having a child was chosen by 35.9% of those surveyed as the main reason for not having a child. Source: Hindustan Times