The couple, from China\u2019s eastern province of Shandong, failed to meet the deadline to pay the \u201csocial maintenance fee\u201d of 64,626 yuan (US$9,500) to the local authority, the local court said on Sunday, and were denied access to the 22,987 yuan in their account as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shandong was reported to have the most newborns nationally in 2017, according to state news agency Xinhua, but a recent report by the \ufeff21st Century Business Herald<\/em>suggested the birth rate in the province may have dropped sharply in 2018, with many cities reporting declining figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China\u2019s National Bureau of Statistics recorded a drop in the number of new births in 2018 to 15.23 million, from 17.23 million in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some social media users appeared confused by the local government\u2019s action while others expressed sympathy for the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs the country joking? It\u2019s urging people who don\u2019t want to give birth to give birth but punishing those who want to,\u201d one commenter wrote on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. SKIP AD<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTaking all the money away from the family, do you want the whole family to die? What about protecting the rights of the baby?\u201d another wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stuart Gietel-Basten, a professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the Shandong case was nonetheless in line with existing law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile the actions in Shandong seem counterintuitive, it is important to remember that birth control restrictions are still in place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRemember, too, that social maintenance fees for out-of-quota births are an important source of local revenue and that a family planning apparatus still exists with jobs to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gietel-Basten also said many people still believed the two-child policy was holding back fertility and that a relaxation of the cap may cause a baby boom in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Jiang Quanbao, a professor of demography at Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University\u2019s Institute for Population and Development Studies, said falling fertility rates in the wake of the two-child policy appeared to show the majority of Chinese couples only wanted to have one or two children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut I guess China will soon (maybe this year) cancel the two children policy and couples can have as many children as they want,\u201d Jiang said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China\u2019s notorious one-child policy, introduced in 1980, was relaxed in 2014 and abandoned altogether in 2016. The number of births rose at first but fell again after peaking at 17.86 million that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alarmed by their ageing and gender-imbalanced populations, local governments in Liaoning, Tianjin, Xinjiang and Hubei since 2017 have been rolling out policies and welfare benefits \u2013 such as flexible working hours and subsidised maternity costs \u2013 to encourage couples to have second children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speculation about a further relaxation of the two-child policy intensified last year when the national post office issued a stamp for the year of the pig featuring two pigs and three piglets. Chinese President Xi Jinping also dropped the usual reference to \u201cfamily planning\u201d during the Communist Party\u2019s five-yearly national congress last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the National Health Commission dampened expectations last month, saying a proposal to remove all references to family planning from China\u2019s statute books had been rejected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The proposal, by some members of the National People\u2019s Congress in March last year, had been turned down by the central government on the grounds that the policy had its roots in the Constitution and removing it would not be appropriate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The couple, from China\u2019s eastern province of Shandong, failed to meet the deadline to pay the \u201csocial maintenance fee\u201d of 64,626 yuan (US$9,500) to the local authority, the local court said on Sunday, and were denied access to the 22,987 yuan in their account as a result. Shandong was reported to have the most newborns nationally in 2017, according to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3052,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions\/3052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why China doesn\u2019t need a baby boom, just a skilled population<\/a>
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nEven if China switches to a three-child policy, it shouldn\u2019t force women to have more babies<\/a>
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nChina birth numbers expected to fall to lowest level since 2000, creating new economic and social challenges<\/a>
<\/h3>\n\n\n\n