Time Magazine reports on apparent confusion over potential changes to China’s one-child policy, as reported last week:
The one-child policy is such a cornerstone of contemporary China that when word got out late last week that Shanghai was encouraging some couples to have more offspring, it made headlines around the world. But on July 25, the same Chinese family-planning official whose remarks set off speculation denied that Shanghai was taking its first steps to reverse the much-hated policy. Apparently reacting to numerous overseas media reports of a change in city birth-control regulations, which was portrayed as being the first sign of a reversal, Xie Lingli was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying that a citywide policy of allowing couples in which each partner is an only child to have two children had been in place for many years. She also emphasized that the Shanghai city government’s family-planning office would never actively encourage any new measure that was counter to national policy.
[…] Xie’s apparent backpedaling over the weekend underscores the sensitivity of the one-child policy in China. First introduced in 1979 as a measure to rein in China’s booming population, the law has faced widespread opposition from its first day. Because local levels of compliance with the law make up an important part of whether district bureaucrats get promoted, officials have often turned to harsh tactics — including forced sterilization and late-term abortion — to enforce compliance.
