China may consider ending birth limits as soon as this year
BEIJING — China is plan- ning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a historic end to a policy that spurred countless humanrights abuses and left the world’s second-largest economy short of workers.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, has commissioned research on the repercus- sions of ending the coun- try’s roughly four-decade-old policy and intends to enact the change nationwide, said the people, who asked not to be named while discuss- ing government deliberations. The leadership wants to reduce the pace of aging in China’s population and remove a source of interna- tional criticism, one of the people said.
Proposals under discus- sion would replace the pop- ulation-control one called “independent policy with fertility,” allowing people to decide how many children to have, the person said. The decision could be made as soon as the fourth quar- ter, the second person said, adding that the announce-
ment might also be pushed into 2019.
Danone, which has doubled its share of China’s baby food market in the past five years, rose to a session high in Paris before paring gains. The policy change would close the book on one of the largest social experiments in human history, which left the world’s most-populous country with a rapidly aging population and 30 million more men than women. The policies have forced generations of Chinese parents to pay fines, submit to abortions or raise children in the shadows. The U.S. and other Western nations have criticized the coercive measures required to enforce the birth limits, including steep fines, sterilization and forced abortions. The 2015 shift toward a two-child policy was part of a gradual effort to loosen the birth limits over the years as China’s working-age population began to wane. An initial feasibility study was submitted to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in April, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions. That study found there would be “limited” benefits to lifting birth restrictions nationwide.