Three but not freeBIRTH restrictions imposed on China’s ethnic minorities have always been lighter than those on the Han majority. Han Chinese are only now being granted the right to have two children; most minorities living in urban areas have long enjoyed it. Non-Hans living in the countryside are allowed to have three, and sometimes more. But although family-planning rules are now being relaxed in China, in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where ethnic Uighurs make up 50% of the population, the government is tightening controls.
In 1983 Uighurs—never entirely happy with rule by a Han-dominated Communist Party based in far-distant Beijing—rioted when officials introduced the current limits. Some of them saw the restrictions as an affront to Islam. As a result, officials in some areas applied them more flexibly, even allowing couples in some far-flung places to have four or five children. Uighurs have fewer children than they used to, but since 2010 the birth rate has been rising again. In mainly Uighur Kashgar, a prefecture which borders on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, it is four times...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/1RyJlN6
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