On 29 October 2015, in wake of the fifth plenary session of 18th Chinese Communist Party central committee, China announced to demolish its mandatory one-child policy that had been in operation for more than three decades.
This breaking news on a policy that concerns the most intimate and essential aspect of human life—reproduction—did not seem to have met with enthusiasm from Chinese Netizens. As some of them commented, without an updated infrastructure and system that supports this policy that will change the lives of millions of women and families, the change of policy does not weigh much. More importantly, some families already began having more than one child, by attaining a different nationality or giving birth outside China—popular choices include Hong Kong, where one-child policy does not apply (which generated heated tension between local HongKongers and those mainland ‘birth tourists’ 雙非) and the US, which inspired a box office hit Finding Mr Right (2013; 北京遇上西雅图, literally ‘Beijing Meets Seattle’). Others pay fines (from 30% of household annual income). And for couples who were both born after the 1980s as the only child, they have been made allowed to have two children according to a policy introduced in 2009.
The biggest irony is perhaps how this policy contradicts the current constitution; as dissident writer Ma Jian writes on his Facebook page, that People’s Congress has not yet abolished or revised the Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China, or deleted Article 18, which states “the state maintains its current policy for reproduction, encouraging late marriage and childbearing and advocating one child per couple.”
