The new Chinese course oriented towards internal consumption will also be felt on demographics. Indeed, after 37 years, Beijing renounces the one-child policy. The Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China - in the four days of discussions for the elaboration of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) - decided to allow couples to have a second child without penalties.
The one-child policy was introduced in China in 1978, in the wake of the debate of the Club of Rome which feared an environmental catastrophe due to overpopulation. Its strict application began in the early 80s and control was entrusted to the State Council, which is the executive in China, through an ad hoc agency. Practical enforcement, however, remained in the hands of the provinces.
The system envisaged a mechanism of fines for those who conceived a second child and often led to forced abortions or failure to register children in the registry office. Limitation management had already been largely relaxed in recent years. In 2013, in particular, the provinces had decided to allow couples in which one of the members is an only child to have a second child.
The one-child planning has caused major imbalances. In a country that has always considered daughters a disgrace, between 2010 and 2013 the ratio between men and women reached 117:100. The other theme is ageing.
The Chinese population of working age, 15-65, is in fact decreasing at a worrying rate: according to UN data, China will lose 67 million workers between 2010 and 2030, against an increase in the elderly population from 110 million in 2010 to 210 million in 2030. And in 2050 the elderly will represent about a quarter of the population.
All this without actually slowing down the dynamics of population growth: if 700 million people lived in China at the beginning of the one-child policy, now they are almost double.
