Editor’s note for Tuesday, June 1, 2021
A note from the editor of today's The China Project Access newsletter.
My thoughts today:
Another sign of the times? Last week, writer and journalist Peter Hessler of the New Yorker confirmed he will be leaving China after his university in Sichuan chose not to renew his contract. No reasons were cited.
China now has a three-child policy โ see todayโs top story for more on this. Why did the government keep birth limits, just raising the number to three, rather than completely lifting restrictions on births?
No official reason was given for the choice to only further partially relax family planning policies, but the scholar Darren Byler suggests, โIf there was no [birth restriction policy] across the whole country, it would be difficult to enforce a separate one for poor people and Muslims.”
In other words, the government wants to keep an important lever of social control in place to ensure that other goals such as rural poverty alleviation and control over Xinjiang can be met.
There is also no incentive to disband the family planning bureaucracy which employs millions across the country.
Our word of the day is the three-child policy is here (ไธๅญฉ็่ฒๆฟ็ญๆฅไบsฤn hรกi shฤngyรน zhรจngcรจ lรกi le).
โJeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
