China's one-child policy

The Chinese people felt an immediate sense of relief last Thursday when their government stated that it will permit married couples now to have two children. The government’s one-child policy has created “a demographic nightmare,” and its leaders now must address the glaring side-effects of that policy: a diminished work force, an aging population, and a shortage of marriageable women.

It was on September 25, 1980, thirty-five years ago, that China’s leaders tried to rein in China’s galloping population of one billion people by a social engineering project, and that was to deny couples more th...