Skip to main content

Article from the Guardian: China scraps three family planning offices amid push to boost birthrate


China scraps three family planning offices amid push to boost birthrate

Move comes as speculation mounts Beijing will soon drop limits on how many children families can have
 in Beijing

Shares

5
Mothers attend a breastfeeding public welfare activity in Xiangyang
 Over the last five years, China has phased out its notorious one-child policy Photograph: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
China has done away with three family planning offices, in another sign the country may soon eliminate birth limits altogether after almost four decades of restricting family sizes.
China’s health commission said on Sunday that it had replaced three offices tasked with implementing family planning policies with one for “population monitoring and family development”. The new office would be tasked with “improving birth policy”, according to a statement posted online.
Speculation has mounted that China, with its quickly ageing population and low birth rates, will drop family planning limits entirely.
Over the last five years, China has phased out its notorious one-child policy that critics blame for millions of forced abortions and sterilisations. Now all couples in China are allowed to have two children. But many Chinese, faced with the high costs of education and housing and accustomed to one-child households, have chosen not to have a second child.
Last week, a draft civil code omitted all mentions of family planning and earlier last month, a government issued postage stamp for the Year of the Pig featured a happy family of five: two parents and their three piglets.
In March, the health commission removed “family planning” from its official name. Bloomberg reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter, that China was planning to scrap all limits on families by the end of 2018.
Observers worry the government will continue to intervene in the reproductive lives of its citizens, moving to a pro-natalist policy that is as aggressive as the one-child policy.
Last month, two Chinese academics called for requiring all working adults below the age of 40 to contribute to a “reproduction fund” to subsidise childcare costs for larger families. The proposal, which was widely criticised, drew parallels with the steep fines Chinese families once received for having more children.
On Chinese social media, users commented on the health commission reorganisation. One user wrote, “What’s the point of canceling these offices? Isn’t forcing people to have a second child still a form of ‘family planning’?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Article from The Guardian: "The Super Rich: Six Things to Know "

    America's super rich: six things to know Our new series, Big Money , is investigating the social and political clout of the super-rich. Natalie Jones and Alastair Gee in San Francisco, California I s America an oligarchy? That was the conclusion of a 2014 study by two prominent US political scientists , who argued that the influence of economic elites and big business far outstrips that of ordinary citizens. In their view, America is less a bastion of representative democracy than a nation trammeled by the desires of the hyper-wealthy. Others have suggested that their vision is too bleak. But the outsize economic, social and political clout of the super-wealthy in America is beyond debate - and ripe for scrutiny. That’s why we’ve launched our newest series, Big Money. Radical inequality The three richest people in the US - Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet - own more than the bottom half of the country combined. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Article from "The New York Times" Madagascar and Vanila plantations Photographs and Text by FINBARR O’REILLY AUG. 29, 2018

 Comment:  I once found a bag near a shopping Mall in Paris ....  It looked like a girl owned it because it was full of makeup bits and pieces and there were a lot of cards in it , one of which belonged to a buisness school and this had her name on it.  The student was from Madagascar and i was sighing to myself when i called the school and the receptionist wasnt helpful in finding the person i was looking for.  I went to the consolate or Embassy one morning , spending money on a Taxi in order to give the bag to a safe person working there.  The consolate reminded me of  consolates or embassies representing very poor countries ...   .... where is  all the money and wealth going ? SAMBAVA, Madagascar — Bright moonlight reflected off broad banana leaves, but it was still hard to see the blue twine laced through the undergrowth, a tripwire meant to send the unwary tumbling to the ground. “This is the way the thieves come,” sai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Abigail Heyman’s Groundbreaking Images of Women’s Lives (from The New Yorker)

Photo Booth Abigail Heyman’s Groundbreaking Images of Women’s Lives By Naomi Fry November 1, 2019 “Houma Teenage Beauty Contest,” 1971. Photographs by Abigail Heyman In a two-page spread featured early on in “ Growing up Female ,” a photography book by Abigail Heyman, from 1974, two black-and-white pictures are laid out side by side. The left-hand photo shows a reflection of a little girl, from the shoulders up, gazing at herself in a bathroom mirror. The child, who is perhaps four or five, with dark, wide-set eyes and a pixie haircut, is separated from her likeness by a counter, whose white-tiled expanse is littered with a variety of beauty products: perfume bottles, creams, and soaps. These quotidian markers of feminine routine are accompanied by an element of fantasy; gazing at herself, the little girl stretches a slinky into a makeshift tiara atop her head. Seemingly mesmerized by her own image, she is captured at the innoce...
Post a Comment
Read more