CHILD’S PLAY
Further state support is needed to better implement the two-child policy By Ji Jing
Piao Chunhua is in two minds. Should she expand her business? There’s a high demand for her services but on the other hand, the expenses are also high. Nine years ago, Piao started a private kindergarten in Wangjing, a residential area in northeast Beijing, and today, she has 41 pupils. “Many of the smaller kids are second children,” she said. Since the government relaxed birth control and announced in October 2015 that all couples can have two children, various sectors have been facing a boom in demand as families opt to embrace the new policy. Kindergartens are one of them. As public kindergartens often have stricter requirements—for example, the child should be at least 3 years old or have a household registration in the same area— smaller private kindergartens are becoming a convenient option for many parents.
Piao’s preschool accepts children above 2 years, charging 2,800 yuan ($407) per child per month. Although the fee is almost double that of public kindergartens, it’s still considered low among private ones.
A tough lesson
China is facing a shortage of kindergartens in the wake of the two-child policy. Kindergartens for children under 3 years are especially in short supply. Consequently, only 4 percent of all children under 3 years are enrolled in kindergartens, according to official data. When both the parents work, the lack of an affordable creche where they can drop their children while they go to work means they have no option but to rely on their parents to babysit.
Sun Fenglan, an official from the Beijing Women’s Federation, said the government should push for more kindergartens for children aged between 2 and 3 years by providing financial support and formulating standards for such institutions. The state should also encourage private investors to start kindergartens.
According to Zhai Zhenwu, Dean of the School of Sociology and Population Studies at Renmin University of China, no government department is entrusted with setting up kindergartens for children under 3 years in China. The lack of such institutions is one important reason why many women are not opting to have a second baby.
According to a report published in 2016 by a private market research firm, ResearchInChina, in 2015, there were about 219,000 kindergartens in China, up from 116,000 in 2003, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.4 percent. Private kindergartens on the other hand grew by 8.2 percent, numbering 143,500. In 2003, their number was 55,500.
As a result, many parents have to choose private kindergartens, which are much more expensive, resulting in huge financial burdens on them. In addition to kindergartens, gynecology departments across the country are also feeling the pressure from an increasing number of women giving birth to a second child. At the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Capital Medical University, for instance, some patients have to lie in temporary beds in the corridors as there aren’t enough beds, reported the Oriental Outlook magazine in December 2016.
At the end of 2015, Beijing had a little over 4,900 beds and 6,300 medical staff for all of its gynecology departments, which could accommodate 25,000 patients maximum per month. However, since December 2015, nearly 30,000 patients have been registering per month. In March 2016, the figure climbed as high as 36,000.
“In Beijing, if you can’t register with a hospital