Daily Times

Facing a future demographic crisis and aging society, China’s leaders are desperately seeking to persuade couples to have more children.

But bureaucrats don’t seem to have gotten the message, fining a couple in a recent widely publicized case for having a third child against the strict letter of the law.

The move has sparked outrage among the public, who are venting their anger at venal population control officials who long persecuted couples for violating the now-scrapped “one-child policy.”

“The country is doing all it can to encourage childbirth but the local governments need money, so we end with this sort of madness,” a columnist and political commentator who writes under the name Lianpeng said on China’s Weibo microblogging service.

“The low birthrate has everyone on edge, yet the local governments care only about collecting fees,” journalist Jin Wei wrote on her verified Weibo account. “I don’t know of any other nation that pulls its people in different directions like this.” The Wangs, the couple at the heart of the recent controversy, were ordered by local authorities in Shandong province to pay a fine known as a “social maintenance fee” of 64,626 yuan ($9,500) immediately after the birth of their third child in January 2017. After various deadlines came and went, the family’s entire bank savings of 22,957 yuan ($3,400) were frozen last month, with the balance still due.

In 2016, China lifted its notorious one-child policy and Chinese couples were urged to go forth and multiply — within limits

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” the husband, Wang Baohua, was quoted as saying by local media last week.

The situation the couple faces has its roots in decades-old fears that China’s population would outstrip its resources, along with the ruling Communist Party’s all-consuming fervor to control people’s most personal decisions.

Family planning regulations emerged in the 1970s, and in 1980 the notorious “one-child policy” came into effect, mandating often brutal punishments for violators ranging from forced abortions and sterilizations to fines and workplace demotions.

Fast-forward 35 years, and a radical change of course was ordered after leaders realized an aging population and declining workforce threatened to hamstring the country’s future development. In 2016, the one-child policy was officially replaced with a two-child policy and Chinese couples were urged to go forth and multiply — within limits.

But the bump in the birthrate was fleeting. Last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said the number of new births in 2018 fell to 15.23 million in a total population of 1.395 billion — a growth rate of .381 percent and the lowest increase since 1961, resulting in fully 2 million fewer births than in 2017. China’s population is estimated to peak at 1.442 billion in 2029 and then gradually decline, potentially fulfilling the conventional wisdom that China will grow old before it grows rich.

Published in Daily Times, February 19^th 2019.