Daugherty 1

Owen Daugherty
Mr. Fronk
Honors World Geography
1/25/16
Chinas One Child Policy Ends
Section One
This article talks about how China recently allowed couples to have two children instead
of just one. This policy has been in effect since 1979 to slow the used-to-be rapidly growing
population. An estimate shows that this policy alone could have prevented 400 million more
births. Some punishments for not following the initial policy include fines, loss of employment,
and abortions. Even though this policy is very strict, some provinces in China have been toning
down the punishments because of how harsh they are. The Chinese government has recently
created a new solution to the rapidly growing population. The new policy of two children per
couple is designed to improve a balanced growth of population since about 30% of the
population is over 50. This is a lot of people because the population of the country is about 1.36
billion. Some critics say that this policy is still not enough because it does not boost the birth
rate enough.
Section Two
This article has some similarities with our notes in a couple places. When talking about
the penalties that can be given for violating the One-Child policy, it says, Couples who violated
the one-child policy faced a variety of punishments, from fines and the loss of employment to
forced abortions (BBC News). Our note packet called Chinas One-Child Policy to End
Reading and Questions says that, Local officials resorted to abortion, heavy fines, and forced
sterilization. These two notes include two of the same punishments, fines and forced abortion.
The article also talks about Chinas aging population, saying, concerns at Chinas ageing
population led to pressure for change, talking about why China changed the policy to two
children per couple (BBC News).

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We talked about this in class and in our notes about how the extremely aged population will not
be balanced out if the One-Child Policy was not changed.
Section Three
I think that the policy could still be raised to a Three-Child Policy. I have made this
determination by looking at how things have been going and at what experts predict certain
variables impacts will be on the country. While I think there should be a policy because before
the policy was made the population was growing way too fast, I do not think it should be as
small as two children per couple. Many poorer families need their kids as a source of income,
and the newborns will eventually be the leaders and economic producers for the country. This
will also help to balance the large amount of older people in the population. The country has
been extremely productive in the past, and I think that a Three-Child Policy would be able to
further advance their technology and economy for the future.

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Works Cited
"China to End One-child Policy and Allow Two - BBC News." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 02
Feb. 2016.