Beijing changes policy

[ChinaBound]

Beijing relaxed its birth control policy on Friday, allowing couples to have a second child if either parent is an only child.

An amendment to the Beijing Population and Family Planning Regulations was approved at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

The city government will provide support by improving hospitals, nurseries and primary schools, and by protecting women's right to maternity leave, said Wang Delin, vice chairman of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

It is a significant change to family planning policy that has been in effect for more than three decades and part of a plan to raise the fertility rate and ease the financial burden of a rapidly ageing population.

Beside Beijing, Tianjin Municipality and the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Anhui have also changed their policy.

Provincial-level governments in Guangxi, Hubei and Jiangsu have announced their intentions to relax the policy in March. Others, including Hunan, Qinghai and Shanghai, promised changes in the first half of this year.

[Willy The Londoner]

Bought about by the unrest detected in many children born under that policy who now find that they, as working individuals, have responsibilities not just for their own parents but also both of their parents parents who probably have retired in their fifties. 

This has resulted in one person who is having to maintain up to six others at a time when they should be married and starting their own family.

The bond between Chinese family members is unbelievably strong and it does take 'foreigners' a while to realise just how deep it goes.  You join a Chinese family and you do not take just a wife, you take in parents, sons, daughters, grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncle, aunts, nieces and nephews. 

Willy

[buckbanne]

We need to reward some of our body.

[Willy The Londoner]

We need to reward some of our body.

Just to know what you are saying will be a reward to me

Willy