WHEN China introduced its one-child policy in 1979, it cut a few air-holes in the blanket of coercion. Four towns were quietly allowed to experiment with different approaches, allowing couples to have two children. On October 29th the Communist Party extended that kind permission to everyone. If it had been paying closer attention to its two-child enclaves, it might have done so sooner.
So sensitive was the notion of allowing anyone to have two children that it was not until 2010 that mainland media drew attention to these towns’ policies. One of them, Yicheng in Shanxi province, lies in the basin of the Yellow River. At first sight, it seems like any other small town in China, though a little poorer than the national average. Before long, however, a visitor may notice it is full of sights that are rare elsewhere. A young woman, six months pregnant, holds her five-year-old daughter’s hand. Families race around on mopeds, as everywhere, but in Yicheng, two young children are clinging to the handlebars, not one. When the Zhi Cai primary school breaks for lunch, siblings race towards their waiting mothers. “It’s better to have two children,” says...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/1RyJkZI
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