【彭博社0301】对于中国领导人来说中国的独生子女政策的困境

lilyma06

China’s One-Child Policy Dilemma for Leaders
                                                                                          By                    Bloomberg News                 -                                Mar 2, 2012 12:01 AM GMT+0800
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-01/china-one-child-policy-is-poisoned-chalice-for-xi-s-new-leadership-regime.html
                          
                                                                                                 As the world’s largest nationalcongress meets in Beijing to prepare for new leadership, likelysuccessor Xi Jinping will inherit a roadblock to growth datingback almost to the era of Mao Zedong: the one-child policy.
Implemented in 1979 to alleviate poverty, the restrictionon family size will cut the number of 15- to 24-year-olds, themainstay of factories that drove growth for two decades, by 27percent to 164 million by 2025, the United Nations estimates. Inthe same time, investment that fueled more than half of lastyear’s 9.2 percentexpansion will be constrained by soaringpension and health-care costs as those over the age of 65 surge78 percent to 195 million.
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Nurses carry 30-day-old quadruplets, two baby girls and two baby boys, as they pose for a photo at a hospital in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China. Source: AFP/Getty Images

                  
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A baby is pulled along in its pushchair on a street in Beijing. Photographer: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

                  
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Four pregnant women relax in a coffee shop during a support group meeting at a shopping center in Shanghai. In Shanghai the fertility rate was about 0.79 in the year ended October 2010, according to the latest data from the city’s statistics department. Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

                  
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The dilemma facing China’s cities is that an end to the one-child policy, implemented three years after Mao’s death, would mean more money needed for schools and child facilities just as local governments face surging bills for pensions and elderly care. Photographer: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

                  
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The restriction on family size will cut the number of 15- to 24-year-olds, the mainstay of factories that drove growth for two decades, by 27 percent to 164 million by 2025, the United Nations estimates. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

                  
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Increasing the fertility  rate to 2.3 children per woman, from about 1.6, would cut the decline in the workforce in half by 2050 to 8.8 percent, from 17.3 percent, according to the UN. Photographer: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg

                  
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Women push babies in prams through a park in Beijing. Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

                  
   
  
Failure to scrap the law risks accelerating a demographicchange that the Beijing-based Brookings-Tsinghua Center forPublic Policy estimates could eventually cut China’s growth inhalf. With China accounting for about 30 percent of globalexpansion, the restraint would affect companies such asautomaker General Motors Co. and Yum! Brands Inc., operator ofKFC restaurants.
“This is one of the last chances to change the policybefore things get much worse,” said Helen Qiao, chief GreaterChina economist with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. “If theystart to lift the one-child restriction on urban dwellers now,the economy can get a boost from people still willing to havemore than one kid.”
Increasing the fertility rate to 2.3 children per woman,from about 1.6, would cut the decline in the workforce in halfby 2050 to 8.8 percent, from 17.3 percent, according to the UN.That would reduce China’s reliance onexports as an increase inbirths stokes demand for consumer products such as Danone SA’sbaby formula and Hengan International Group Co.’s diapers.
Baby Consumers Relaxing the one-child policy is “urgent” to help shiftthe economy toward greater consumption, Qiao said. “Increasesto the labor force will take 16 years but people will havebabies now and the boost for consumption will come right away.”
Khiem Do, Hong Kong-based head of multiasset strategy atBaring Asset Management Ltd., which oversees about $46 billion,said an easing of the policy would help “consumer, housing,consumer durables and construction” industries. He declined toname specific stocks, citing company policy.
That may not be enough to persuade the almost 3,000delegates to next week’s National People’s Congress to reverserules that have been a pillar of Communist Party policy forthree decades and are backed by cities including Shanghai, whichface rising pension costs.
“A sudden U-turn is not likely,” said Cai Yong, a fellowat the Carolina Population Center at the University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill. “The government is more worried aboutshort-term problems. More and more people see the problem butthere’s no urgency to change it because it’s slow burning.”
Unwound Slowly The policy instead is more likely to be unwound gradually.Some delegates may push for relaxations in the law at the NPC,which starts on March 5, Wang said.
The government already allows a few exceptions, such aspermitting rural families to have a second child if the first isa girl. Couples in some regions are allowed a second child ifboth parents are single children. Minority ethnic groups areexcluded from the restriction. Those who can afford to may pay afine for having a second or third baby.
“China is going to change its one-child policy,” saidRonald Wan, a Hong Kong-based managing director at ChinaMerchants Securities Co. “It won’t be overnight. They willfine-tune bit by bit. Dairy milk and those companies related tochildren like education, clothing will benefit.”
Urban Dilemma The dilemma facing China’s cities is that an end to theone-child policy, implemented three years after Mao’s death,would mean more money needed for schools and children’sfacilities just as local governments face surging bills forpensions and care for the elderly.
The Shanghai Municipal Population and Family PlanningCommission last year rejected a proposal to allow couples tohave two children because it would strain a system that alreadyhas to deal with an aging population. Deputy Director SunChangmin said the one-child policy is a basic national principleand the overall population remains elevated, according to an Oct.27 statement on the government’s website.
China’s “God-awful one-child policy” will change theproportion of elderly people to workers so rapidly over the next20 years that there’s “no way” the nation can sustain itscurrent level of economic growth, U.S. Vice President Joe Bidentold students at Florida State University on Feb. 6, prior to avisit by Xi to the U.S., according to an official transcript.
Pension Bill Expanding China’s rudimentary pension system to all workerswould cost 7 percent of GDP, or $411 billion, rising to 15percent of GDP by 2050, as the number of pensioners triples,according to Richard Jackson, director of the Global AgingInitiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studiesin Washington. The pool of workers able to pay taxes will fallby 233 million to 682 million, UN projections show.
“To experience that level of aging with basically anunfunded retirement safety net is a recipe for serioustrouble,” said Stephen Roach, a professor at Yale Universityand former non-executive chairman for Morgan Stanley in Asia.
Workers without any security over pension income will saverather than spend, making rebalancing toward more consumptionand away from investment-led growth impossible, Roach said in atelephone interview.
“China’s got to really relax the family planning policybut it’s also got to move aggressively to fund the safety net,”Roach said. “Neither one of those has happened.”
‘Malthusian Shadow’ China’s reluctance to end the policy is also rooted inconcerns a population explosion would hurt economic progress, atheory proposed by political economist Thomas Malthus twocenturies ago, said Wang Feng, a director of the Brookings-Tsinghua center, a venture between China’s Tsinghua Universityand the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
“The Malthusian shadow is really dark and heavy over thehead of China,” Wang said. “China has lost so much timealready. Now time is really running out.”
So, while some delegates at the NPC may call for changes,the policy won’t be on the official agenda this year, said Wang.His center estimates China’s demographic profile will graduallyreduce annual average expansion to about 5 percent or less, from10 percent in the previous three decades.
“China’s demographic changes will also have far-reachingimplications for the world economy, which has relied on China asa global factory for the past two decades and more,” Wang said.
Concerns that ending the policy will trigger a surge inbirths are misguided, according to Jackson, Wang and Cai.
Temporary Respite Cai at the Carolina Population Center estimates an end tothe restrictions would cause the fertility rate to rise onlytemporarily before falling back to 1.5 within five years.Jackson sees it rising to 1.8 or 1.9, while Wang says there “isno reason to believe it can go up to 2,” the rate a nationneeds to prevent its population shrinking.
Japan’s fertility rate is 1.42 while in the U.S. it is 2.08.
Without measures to relax the one-child policy andencourage more children, China’s rate may slump to close to 1within 20 years, said Cai.
China is “shooting itself in the foot” and should offerincentives to families to have more children, said Wang. InShanghai the fertility rate was about 0.79 in the year endedOctober 2010, according to the latest data from the city’sstatistics department.
Aborted Fetuses Worse still, the policy led to thousands of aborted fetuses,many of them female because of the importance of male childrenin Chinese society, causing a gender imbalance. A 2007 study bythe State Population and Family Planning Commission said that by2020 there will be 30 million more men of marriageable age thanwomen, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
A “large group of unhappy, dissatisfied” men, unable tofind wives, “is clearly a serious social concern,” said Wang.
Some parents travel to Hong Kong to have a second child inan effort to circumvent the rules, according to hospitals in thecity. More than 230,000 babies were born to mainland mothers inHong Kong in the decade to 2010, according to the city’s Censusand Statistics Department.
“The one-child policy is definitely one of the importantreasons mothers come to Hong Kong to give birth,” said CheungTak Hong, who runs the obstetrics and gynecology department atHong Kong’s Prince of Wales Hospital. “China’s community, likein most Asian countries, still has deep-rooted values in likingthe idea of a bigger family.”



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