The One Child Policy

China’s One Child Policy has been getting a lot of news recently. A few days ago, the ruling Party announced changes to the Policy that will ease the restrictions a bit. In all honesty, while the Policy is not exactly loose, it was a lot freer than I thought it was.

On one of my first days in China, I went sightseeing with some teachers from my school. Our guide for the day was one of the school’s Chinese staff members named Tracy. While we were walking around, Tracy mentioned something about her sister. This struck me as odd since I assumed that all Chinese people under a certain age were only children.  In my confusion, I finally just asked Tracy how it is that she has a sister since China has the One Child Policy. She said “Oh, my parents paid a fee and they were able to have a second child.” I brushed this off as an anomaly and stopped thinking about it.

About two weeks later, my kindergartners came in for their first day of school. All of my students were accompanied by their parents. Some students also had grandparents with them. One little girl came in and she was far too young for our class. I was about to tell her mother that she had the wrong class when I realized that the mom was with another child who was the right age. It turns out that the too young girl was my student’s sister. Then, more families came in and several of those families had more than one child with them. In all, it turns out that almost half of my students have at least one sibling. This is when I realized that the Policy is not as strict as I thought it was.

In China, there are several exceptions to the One Child Policy. Under the old system, people could have more than one child if they met one of several conditions, such as:

* The parents are members of an ethnic minority.

* Both parents are only children.

* The parents are farmers and their first child is a girl or is disabled.

* A woman is pregnant with twins, triplets, etc.

* The child is born in a different country or Hong Kong and is not a Chinese citizen.

* The parents pay a high fee to buy another birth permit.

Since my students are wealthy, their parents are the kind that can afford to buy another birth permit. (A child without a birth permit is like an undocumented person in America.)  This is why so many of them have siblings.

The One Child Policy will now allow couples where only one person is an only child to have a second child. So, that will give many more couples the option of a second baby. This means that in a few years, I might start to see more middle class kids with siblings.

Maybe more families will look like this is 5 years.

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