China’s Zhejiang Becomes First Province to Loosen Family-Planning Policy

China’s Zhejiang Becomes First Province to Loosen Family-Planning Policy

Zhejiang First Province to Make Good on Communist Party Pledge to Relax One-Child Rule

JOSH CHIN

Updated Jan. 17, 2014 9:59 a.m. ET

Children play while waiting for their trains at Hangzhou East Railway Station in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang province, on Thursday. ZUMAPRESS.com

BEIJING—Eastern China’s Zhejiang province announced a loosening of its family-planning policy on Friday, becoming the first province to make good on the Communist Party’s pledge to relax the country’s controversial one-child rule.Revised rules now allow a couple to have a second child if at least one of the parents is an only child, according to a statement posted on the Zhejiang provincial government website.

Previously, couples in the province were allowed to have a second child only if both parents were only children.

The move by Zhejiang, a wealthy coastal province located south of Shanghai, comes less than three weeks after China’s legislature formally approved easing of the country’s restrictive family-planning policies. The decision was among the most surprising reforms announced by the Communist Party following a major conclave in November and is the most significant change to China’s family-planning regime since the one-child rule was imposed three decades ago.

In allowing more couples to have a second child, China hopes to mitigate a looming labor crisis. As many as 67 million people are expected to exit the labor force between 2010 and 2030, according to United Nations projections, while the population of those over the age of 65 is projected to skyrocket to 210 million by 2030, up from 110 million in 2010.

But it will take a while for the change to boost China’s overall economy as the additional babies grow up. For the next couple of decades, it may even deepen economic problems as parents and grandparents reduce work hours to care for them.

With costs of living rising in urban areas, it also isn’t clear how many Chinese couples will elect to take on the added expense of a second child. Population experts estimate the number of new births as a result of the policy shift will be modest, likely somewhere between one million and two million over the next three years.

Some provinces, such as Zhejiang, already allowed urban couples to have a second child under some circumstances. Rural residents and minorities, meanwhile, have long been allowed to have more than one child.

Although a number of demographers and economists have recommended scrapping birth restrictions altogether, the government has said changes to family-planning policy will be gradual.

In approving the relaxed rules in December, China’s leaders instructed individual provinces and cities to amend their family-planning policies “in time, based on evaluation of [the] local demographic situation.”

Beijing, along with central China’s Hubei province and the Guangxi region in the south, are expected to implement relaxed family-planning rules as early as March, according to the official Xinhua news agency.