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Meeting challenges of a huge population
By Zhang Feng (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-07-16 01:28
Measures are being taken to deal effectively with various population issues
including an unbalanced ratio between the number of boys and girls born, a
rapidly growing elderly society, and increasing demands for reproductive
healthcare.
And a low birth rate remains a difficult task for some time into the future
in the world's most populous country, said Zhao Baige, vice-minister of the
National Population and Family Planning Commission.
Moreover, population development is still being challenged by other problems,
"which require us to strengthen research into population strategy and take
effective measures immediately," Zhao said.
Zhao made these remarks at a news conference held by the Information Office
of the State Council Thursday.
Zhao's commission is undertaking a national "Girl Care" project to educate
people to give up their traditional preference for male children.
The hope is to gradually change the nation's unbalanced birth ratio, which is
currently 117 boys to 100 girls born.
Additionally, parents who have two girls, as well as one-child parents and
those with a disabled child, will be given 1,200 yuan (US$144) by the central
government annually when they reached 60 years old in some rural pilot project
areas.
The pilot project is expected to be spread to all of China next year.
This project will also help China to set up a comprehensive social assurance
system for helping one-child families better look after parents in an aging
society.
According to statistics in 2000, China has 88.3 million people over 65, who
account for 7 per cent of the total population.
In Chinese rural areas, the majority of the old parents still depend on
support from their children instead of an unestablished national social
assurance system.
In keeping the birth rate low, China has employed a "multivariate" family
planning policy for the past 30 years, instead of just one-child policy in all
areas, she noted.
Generally, urban families can only bear one child; rural parents, whose first
child is a girl, can have the another child.
And mothers of minority nationalities can give birth to three children or
even more. For example, in Tibet Autonomous Region, there are no birth
limitations at all, Zhao said.
In terms of contraception for family planning, the government does not force
people to co-operate, but fully respect their human rights.
China has 240 million women of childbearing age, 83 per cent of whom take
various contraception methods for family planning. It would be unimaginable for
the government to enforce family planning on so many people, Zhao added.
The induced abortion rate in China is 28 per cent, similar to 25 per cent in
the United States.
Women in the country have various options of contraception, according to
their own willing.
About 48 per cent women wear intrauterine devices, 36 per cent have tubal
ligation surgery, and the majority of the rest take oral contraceptives or have
partners who use condoms.
"I am so glad that I can choose contraceptive methods by myself, taking the
pills instead of having an operation, which might be quite simple but makes me
scared," said Zhang Guanglian, a 35-year-old woman in Zhulu Town of Junan County
of East China's Shandong Province.
With a 10-year-old daughter, Zhang was allowed to bear her second child, a
boy, two years ago.
Meanwhile, migrant people, the total number of whom has reached nearly 140
million, are getting more equal rights in employment, insurance, health care and
children's education, especially in big cities including Beijing and Shanghai,
Zhao noted.
And the commission's 120,000 reproductive health technicians and one million
female volunteers for family planning, will play a vital role in preventing the
HIV virus from spreading through sexual contact and mother-to-infant channels.
China has 840,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers and is witnessing an annual rate of
increase of 32 per cent.
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