{"id":163437,"date":"2015-10-30T05:47:17","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T05:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=163437"},"modified":"2015-10-30T05:47:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T05:47:17","slug":"china-to-end-one-child-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=163437","title":{"rendered":"China to end one-child policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">China has decided to end its decades-long one-child policy, the state-run Xinhua news agency reports.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Couples will now be allowed to have two children, it said, citing a statement from the Communist Party.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The controversial policy was introduced nationally in 1979, to slow the population growth rate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It is estimated to have prevented about 400 million births. However concerns at China&#8217;s ageing population led to pressure for change.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Couples who violated the one-child policy faced a variety of punishments, from fines and the loss of employment to forced abortions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Over time, the policy has been relaxed in some provinces, as demographers and sociologists raised concerns about rising social costs and falling worker numbers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The decision to allow families to have two children was designed &#8220;to improve the balanced development of population&#8221; and to deal with an aging population, according to the statement from the Community Party&#8217;s Central Committee carried by the official Xinhua News Agency (in Chinese) on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Currently about 30% of China&#8217;s population is over the age of 50. The total population of the country is around 1.36 billion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Communist Party began formally relaxing national rules two years ago, allowing couples in which at least one of the pair is an only child to have a second child.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Introduced in 1979, the policy meant that many Chinese citizens &#8211; around a third, China claimed in 2007 &#8211; could not have a second child without incurring a fine<\/li>\n<li>In rural areas, families were allowed to have two children if the first was a girl<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Other exceptions included ethnic minorities and &#8211; since 2013 &#8211; couples where at least one was a single child<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Campaigners say the policy led to forced abortions, female infanticide, and the under-reporting of female births<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>It was also implicated as a cause of China&#8217;s gender imbalance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China has decided to end its decades-long one-child policy, the state-run Xinhua news agency reports. Couples will now be allowed to have two children, it said, citing a statement from the Communist Party. The controversial policy was introduced nationally in 1979, to slow the population growth rate. It is estimated to have prevented about 400 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":163438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"class_list":["post-163437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/163438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}