质量评价系统:Li Hong's column--English--People's Daily Onl...[]

By Li Hong

The mounting calls by some scholars and demographers to relax China's iconic family planning policy is good-willed, fearing a depletion of labor pool would shortcut the economic boom and intensify the country's aging. But, any revision of a highly successful basic state policy warrants caution.

It is particularly intriguing that more and more foreign demographers join some Chinese research fellows in insisting Beijing abandon the one-child policy in all Chinese cities, and allow every couple to have two children. These experts contend China's low birthrate, once an economic advantage, is now destined to clip the country's rise.

We cannot fathom how many newborns will arrive if the policy sluice is lifted. However, considering China now has an urban population of 630 million, twice the total population of the United States, we are really unsure of our cities' ability to accommodate an ever larger populace.

The one-child policy, planned and promulgated in late 1970s, is an integral part of Mr. Deng Xiaoping's reform package. The arrangement is estimated to have withheld 400 million births by now. A natural proliferation would have exploded the country with at least 1.7 billion, straining all types of resources, and we could hardly find a fledging and dynamic country China is today.

Our per-capita GDP has just reached $3,500 – middle level among nations, which is about one twelfth of the United States. Many countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America have encountered the so-called "middle-income trap" after a period of high-speed growth. It is difficult to render that a surge of newborns will help China overcome the trap, if not drag the country trekking longer in it.

If only a change was indeed and indisputably needed, the government must conduct trials in designated smaller areas, first, and extend a carefully choreographed plan at a gradual, one-step-at-a-time tempo. A drastic or tempest run allowing all Chinese couples to have two or more children must be avoided.

The current policy allowing urban couples to have a second child if both the husband and wife were only children is already a revision designed to prop up young population in the cities, and it is a correct move.
The proponents of family policy change underscore an argument from aboard and home that China's low urban fertility – around 0.9 per women on average – would cause a spate of "social problems", including inadequate replacement of the labor force, fast aging of Chinese population, and a dry-up of future proceeds flowing to the pension fund, as less people work on the assembly lines.

But, their pattern of reasoning is dubious. It's untenable that China will always have to depend on abundance of inexpensive labor force to compete with other countries. The much acclaimed "population dividend" is in a sense a metaphor for low productivity of Chinese workers. The United States has less than one fourth of our population, but, its annual GDP is three times of ours. How long China has to rely on cheap labor, and incessant baby-boomers, to do the job?

Also, the current birthrate, widely believed at 1.6 -1.8 children per women nationwide, is higher than that in most developed countries. China's population will peak at more than 1.45 billion in the early 2020s, and, any relaxation of the family-planning policy will prop up the peak to possibly 1.6 billion and higher. It will be increasingly hard to feed and attend to that amount of people in this small piece of land, I would think.

There is another argument, claiming the one-child culture is now so ingrained among Chinese couples that Beijing may not be able to encourage more births even if it tries. As a matter of fact, the one-child policy has been enforced only in Chinese cities. In the past 30 years, couples in rural areas have been giving birth to two children. And, recently, a couple in central Henan Province, were reported by local press as living in a mountain cave and giving birth to 5 children all together.

China has a long tradition of passing on male heirs, to continue the family line. If the stringent family-planning is loosened, a stampede in pursuit for more baby boys cannot be ruled out, ramming up population growth precipitously. As we are already complaining about a larger income gap among urban and rural residents, a disproportionate baby boom in poor countryside will exacerbate the divide.

Our country's rise in the initial take-off stage has depended on a huge spurt of cheap young workers. Now the size of the work force is beginning to level off. But, China must now work hard to increase productivity to stave off the impact of fewer workers, in stead of drastically changing policy, and get stalled in another population trap.