Imagine being pregnant with a second child in a country with a one-child-per-family limit. The penalties for violating the policy are severe-forced abortions, sterilizations, and crippling fines. This was, of course, the grim reality for many Chinese citizens before October 30, 2015. That day, China’s Central Communist Party issued a short announcement that all Chinese couples will be allowed to have two children, ending 35 years of the notorious one- child policy.

The official reason for ending this policy lies in its troubling effects on China’s demographics: After decades of successfully curbing population growth, the one-child policy has caused China to become a country with a rapidly aging population (that is enjoying more longevity) and a corresponding shrinking young work force, which together put enormous pressure on the country’s labor industry and public service resources. Commentators have overlooked the fact that the new two-child policy may also have important implications for President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption crackdown (covered from different perspectives here, here, and here ). The one-child policy (perhaps inadvertently) fostered at least two forms of corruption, and the end of that policy will therefore make a non-negligible contribution to reducing corruption in China.

Continue reading →