China to Allow Third Child

Five years ago, China amended its longstanding policy of allowing each married couple to have only one child. At that time, a second child was permitted. But that change didn’t solve the problem of China’s plunging birth rate, so the country’s rulers have now relaxed the policy further, and will allow a third child.

China will allow couples to have three children in a historic shift of its birth control policy as the country reckons with its slowest population growth in decades.
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Yet the two-child policy has failed to deliver a baby boom, and Beijing has found itself grappling with the challenges of a rapidly greying society in which there may not be enough young workers to support the elderly.

Demographers are skeptical that the latest change will have much effect, both because few Chinese couples can afford to have three children, and because, after decades of one-child policy, there are not enough women of childbearing age.

But those points are of relatively little interest to me. It is appalling that in any country, a ruling clique can dictate how many children a couple can have, with its orders backed by forced abortions and fines. Despite its often-successful PR efforts, China remains a cruel, totalitarian country. The fact that the American Left mostly admires the People’s Republic and envies the repressive tools at its command is revealing, and the fact that American companies generally kowtow to the CCP is disgusting. China’s government needs to be called out for the international disgrace that it is.

But America’s press has no stomach for such an effort. On the contrary, it is still trying to ban mention of the fact that the Wuhan virus originated in Wuhan.