China's one-child rule turns into a time bomb

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China's one-child policy has prevented almost half a billion births but has turned into a demographic time bomb as the population ages, storing up huge economic and social problems for the country.

As the world's population hits the seven billion mark, straining the earth's resources, China can claim to have curbed its birth rate to around 1.5 children per woman since the policy was introduced in 1979.

Without the birth limits, which no other country applies as rigorously or on such a scale, the world's most populous nation would have hundreds of millions more mouths to feed than the 1.34 billion it has now.

But from modern cities to remote villages, its implementation has involved abuses from mass sterilisation to abortions as late as eight months into the pregnancy.

Baby girls have also been abandoned and killed. Couples who defy the rule can face fines amounting to several years' salary, have access to social services cut and even go to prison.

Their so-called ‘black children’ have no legal status in China. Ethnic minorities and farmers whose first child is a girl are exempt from the restriction and in some areas, couples where both parents are only children are also allowed to have a second baby.

But three decades on, demographers, sociologists and economists are warning of a looming crisis as China becomes the only developing country in the world to face growing old before it grows rich.

China's crisis is approaching ‘incomparably faster’ than in Europe, where fertility has fallen very gradually over the last century, Paris-based demographer Christophe Guilmoto told the media.

In the next five years the number of people in China over 60 will jump from 178 million to 221 million, 13.3 per cent to 16 per cent of the population according to the People's Daily Online.

By 2050, a quarter of China's population will be over 65, the Commission for Population and Family Planning said, compared to just nine per cent today. Already, half of China's over-60s live alone, a situation unthinkable before, when four generations would live under one roof.

The upside-down pyramid, whereby a single child shoulders responsibility for two parents and four grandparents is a major headache for the government, particularly as unemployment rises, forcing more and more people to migrate to cities for work.

Liang Zhongtang, a demographer involved in family planning, said the pressure would grow as Chinese born between 1962 and 1972 retire.