China softens line on single child policy

[alp227]

China's single child policy was once a source of pride to government planners, with slogans reflecting strict family planning laws emblazoned on buildings across the country.

But reminders of the policy's harshest excesses are being scrubbed away in an effort to create a softer message, with officials phasing out older, threatening slogans in favour of more upbeat ones.

According to the People's Daily, the aim is to "make family planning work keep pace with the times and go deep among the masses".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/27/china-single-child-policy

[demosincebirth]

1. Gee, I wonder why?

[BlueIris]

2. The Economist had some harsh commentary on this sickening policy last year:

http://www.economist.com/node/18988496

[Neue Regel]

4. This part of the article you linked to really stood out:

“Before 1997 they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy…After 2000 they began to confiscate our children.” Thus Yuan Chaoren, a villager from Longhui county in Hunan province, describing in Caixin magazine the behaviour of family-planning bureaucrats. According to Caixin, local officials would take “illegal children” and pack them off to orphanages where they were put up for adoption. Foreign adoptive parents paid $3,000-5,000 per child. The bureaucrats collected a kickback.


From now on, any time I hear about someone who adopted a child from China I will always wonder if the child orphaned, or were they stolen and sold? Sickening.

[Fearless]

3. Same policy, pretty new bow?

[sofa king]

5. Sounds more like they softened the rhetoric.

The article is about a change in propaganda, not policy.