On October 29, 2015, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China released a communiqué. It stated that all married couples would be permitted to have two children. The announcement consisted of a single, dry paragraph within a broader policy document. It ended the most ambitious and coercive population control program in modern history.
The policy, formally the one-child policy, was implemented in 1980 to curb rapid population growth and spur economic development. Enforcement varied, involving fines, forced sterilizations, and abortions. Demographers estimate it prevented between 300 and 400 million births. It also created a population with a severe gender imbalance due to a cultural preference for sons, and a rapidly aging society with a shrinking workforce.
Most people assume the policy was uniformly applied. It was not. Exemptions existed for ethnic minorities, rural families whose first child was a girl, and couples who were both only children. The result was a patchwork of enforcement that often fell hardest on the urban poor. The policy’s end was not driven by human rights concerns but by demographic necessity. The working-age population had already begun to shrink, threatening economic growth and straining social support systems.
The two-child policy, and the subsequent three-child policy announced in 2021, failed to produce a significant baby boom. Birth rates continued to fall, dropping to record lows in 2023. The legacy of October 29 is a demographic trap. The state spent a generation convincing its citizens that one child was a patriotic duty. It now struggles to persuade them to have more.