China puts an end to its notorious one-child policy enforcer
Family planning commission to disappear as Beijing relaxes population controls
China’s family planning commission, which for nearly four decades enforced the country’s notorious one-child policy, will be absorbed by a new agency as the government stops trying to clamp down on births.
The new National Health Commission will take over responsibility for population management from the National Health and Family Planning Commission, which dates back in various forms to 1981 and known for its use of forced abortions and sterilisation, and hefty fines to limit births.
The phrase “family planning” will disappear from the ministerial structure, as China grapples with a shrinking labour pool and rapidly ageing population.
The new health commission will also be responsible for national health policy, reforming in the medical system, controlling tobacco use, and overseeing occupational health, according to a proposal presented the National People’s Congress in Beijing on Tuesday.
“It is a historic change and watershed moment,” said Yi Fuxian, a long-standing critic of China’s birth control policy and a researcher at the University of Wisconsin.
“China is shifting from population control to population development.”
As late as in 2013, filmmaker Zhang Yimou and his wife Chen Ting were fined 7.48 million yuan for having three extra children.
