China allows couples to have three children in the face of the demographic crisis

China will allow couples to have three children, ignoring calls to completely abandon their historic family policies in the face of an approaching demographic crisis after Beijing reported that the population grew at its slowest pace in decades.

Xinhua, the state-run Chinese media agency, said the Communist Party’s politburo, made up of its 25 senior officials, had concluded that the new “three-child policy” was intended to “actively address the aging population and maintain the ‘China’s natural advantage in human resources’.

Experts, the public and even China’s central bank have called on the government to completely remove birth limits after the census published this month showed that the population added 5.4% compared to $ 1.341 billion in 2010 (the lowest rate of increase between censuses since the People’s Republic of China began collecting data in 1953) and births went decrease drastically.

But Beijing has been reluctant to break with the population control apparatus of decades ago that implemented a widely unpopular one-child policy, often employing brutal means, including forced abortions and sterilizations.

In the last five years, China’s fertility rate has dropped dramatically to 1.3 births per woman, one of the lowest in the world. The two-child policy, introduced in 2015, had little impact on the increase in births.

Demographers say the increase in income, urbanization and the cost of raising children has led to a decline in fertility rates that will be extremely difficult to reverse.

The announcement of the three-child policy met with a rapid reaction on social media, despite widespread censorship of government criticism.

“I recommend that you first solve the fundamental problems of child nutrition more. . . the unfair treatment of women in the workplace, before asking them to have children! ”Read the most liked response from Xinhua’s announcement to Weibo, the microblogging platform.

“Many of us were the only child of our generation. Then [the government] he fined us. Now they want us to raise four elderly parents plus three children. . . only in your dreams, “read another answer.