China eases 'one-child' population policy
October 29, 2015
The Chinese government has decided to ease its brutal one-child policy, allowing parents to have two children.
The one-child policy was adopted in 1979 to curtail China’s population growth. The policy resulted in widespread human-rights abuses including forced abortions and sterilizations.
Buoyed by a growing economy and concerned about demographic pressures—including an aging population, an imbalance of males over females, and a need for more young workers in the labor force—the Communist Party has gradually relaxed its determination to hold all couples to a single child, allowing exceptions in some cases. The official Xinhua news agency has now announced that families of two children will be generally acceptable.
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