October 29 Communist China declared that families will now be allowed to have two children rather than one child.
China’s previous policy, which limited each family to one child, created in 1979, controlled their rapidly growing population. This policy targeted the Han Chinese, an ethnic group native to East Asia, which obeyed this law for 36 years.
“Han families in rural areas could apply to have a second child if the first child was a girl. In areas where the policy was enforced, parents could lose their jobs for having more than one child. Sometimes the second or third child was penalized and could not be registered, so he or she could not go to school,” according to americamagazine.org.
According to americamagazine.org, widespread negative effects such as “loneliness and pressure to take care of elders as an adult,” led to this new two-child policy.
Convent of the Sacred Heart Upper School Chinese teacher Mrs. Joanne Wu-Havemeyer discussed her reaction to the new policy.
“I think that most Chinese citizens welcome this new law. Yet, I believe that some citizens still are anxious in facing a high cost of living to raise a second child,” Mrs. Wu-Havemeyer said.
The two-child law will not take effect until it has been “endorsed and refined by the central government and then implemented by provincial-level governments, which can introduce their own variations on the general policy. That could take many months,” according to nytimes.com.
Junior Kendall Newman lived in Shanghai, China for one year and attended the Concordia International School of Shanghai before returning to Sacred Heart for seventh grade.
“Before moving to China I had no idea there was a one-child policy so when I arrived I was shocked. Coming from a family with four children I could not understand what it must be like for almost everyone to be an only child. I think the new two-child policy is a great change because it is great to grow up with siblings and the Chinese people should be allowed to have that experience,” Kendall said.
Kendall believes that the two-child policy will be accepted and welcomed but also believes that there will be some opposition.
“I think many of the citizens of China will react positively to this new policy, but I think there will be some of the older generation who would like to keep the policy the same as it has been for years. The people who want China to become more forward-thinking and less stuck in the old ways will be happy with the change,” Kendall said.
-Alexandra Dimitri, Managing Editor and Video Content Editor