Don’t worry I've got your back: Two boys keep each other company at a furniture store in Beijing, on Jan. 19, 2015. (Photo : Getty Images)
Almost a year after the two-child policy surfaced, the effects can be seen in varied forms, and though reactions have been generally mixed, some held on tightly on their stance that China should totally abolish its rules on family planning.
For a couple of toy companies, they already grabbed the chance to capitalize on the new policy.
London-based Hamleys--“The Finest Toy Shop in the World”--eyes China’s densely populated urban cities for store expansion in 2017, such as Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai, according to Bloomberg.
Hamleys’ 75,000 square-feet store in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, opened this year.
Within three years, retail giant Toys “R” Us, headquartered in New Jersey, U.S.A., aims to operate 200 stores in the country.
On the local scene, things seem to be not that sunny.
The increasing number of pregnancies challenge hospitals, with some already burdened by being understaffed, according to Duan Tao, Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital’s director, reported Caixin Online.
Duan said that when the government abolished the one-child policy, many women past 35 started taking chances to conceive again.
As for some couples, one child suffices.
Han Jing said to The Washington Post that together with her husband Zhang Pengzhi, raising their 8-year-old son, Zichen prove to be a money-draining feat, not to mention, physically demanding and time consuming, too.
“We’re too tired.”
Han also said that having another child might compel them to move to a bigger apartment.
One sperm donor, an IT programmer and father to a 1-year-old girl, shares the same sentiment, according to Time.
He and his wife no longer plan to have another child because, according to him, “raising more than one child is too tiring.”
Time also reported that sperm banks struggle with “serious shortages” as more couples desire to have a second child.
The government started to loosen its one-child policy in 2013, reported BBC.
If a parent happens to be an only child, then that parent can be eligible to have two children.
In their study, “The Effect of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years” published by The New England Journal of Medicine on Sept. 15, 2005, Therese Hesketh, Ph.D., Li Lu, M.D. and Zhu Wei Xing, M.P.H. said that due to many factors such as globalization and the “massive socioeconomic change” in China, it appears that the restrictive one-child policy becomes “increasingly anachronistic.”
“What was appropriate in 1979 may not be so now,” according to the study.
Fast forward to October 2015: various news outlets informed China and the rest of the world that the government ended--after some 35 years--its one-child policy; still, certain family planning laws stay.
Hesketh conducted another study titled “The Effects of China’s Universal Two-Child Policy” published by U.K. medical journal The Lancet on Oct. 15.
“Population increase will be relatively small, peaking at 1.45 billion in 2029,” according to Hesketh and her co-researcher Yi Zeng, Ph.D.
They said that at present, the government should consider that “more sound policy actions are needed to meet the social, health, and care needs of the elderly population.”
Investigative journalist Dai Qing and demographer Liang Zhongtang both want the government to scrap--“once for all,” said Liang--its family planning policies, reported The Guardian.
“Let people decide how many children they want to have,” said Liang.
Dai, in an opinion piece about the one-child policy published by The New York Times, recalled how she and her friends and other similar Chinese women during the ‘70s enjoyed the liberty to decide what to do with their bodies and how they would establish a family.
She concluded her piece with a strong declaration--perhaps could likewise be considered as a challenge to the authorities--“It’s time to restore that right to all Chinese women.”
