DEMOGRAPHIC POLICY IN CHINA: TRANSFORMATION, PROBLEMS AND RESULTS

Abstract

Demographic problems in the form of a decrease in the birth rate, an increase in the number of the elderly population, an increase in the demographic burden cause a natural reaction of the state - a demographic policy to solve the problems that have arisen. For China, one of the main demographic problems was the large population, which threatened the new state with big social problems. The aim of this study is a systematic, historically driven analysis of the demographic policies pursued by the People's Republic of China from 1979 until 2016, when the country's leadership realized the problems that the One Family, One Child policy had created. The research methodology includes a comparative historical analysis that allows analyzing changes in the demographic policy of the PRC, a systematic approach that records changes in the demographic situation, depending on the state policy. The results show that the policy pursued for almost forty years has created problems that no one in the leadership of the Communist Party and the state calculated and, accordingly, it was not possible to foresee the consequences at that time. Therefore, in 2015, a gradual adjustment of the policy of restricting childbearing begins, and the final cancellation occurs in 2016, when all Chinese were allowed to have two children in the family, but this relaxation did not change the reproductive behavior of the Chinese population. A single-child family has become the norm for the Chinese. Large families, which for centuries have been the norm for the Chinese population, are a thing of the past. Therefore, without receiving a result from the "One Family - Two Children" policy, the Chinese were allowed, and then strongly recommended, especially to members of the CCP, to give birth to three children. But at the same time, there were practically no material incentives for the implementation of the new demographic policy. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the analysis of the demographic policy of the PRC in the field of fertility will avoid negative consequences when regulating the birth rate of other states.