Henan, China’s most populous province, has passed new legislation to allow couples

Henan, China’s most populous province, has passed new legislation to allow couples to have a second child, provided that both husband and wife are from one-child families. With this move, all of China’s 22 provinces, 4 municipalities, 5 autonomous regions now allow couples made up of single children on both sides to have a second child.

Since the late 1970s, in order to slow down sky-rocketing population increase and ease economic, social and environmental pressure, China has been promoting the “one-child policy”, a birth control plan requiring Chinese families to have only one child, notwithstanding certain exceptional circumstances. According to the Chinese constitution, “both husband and wife have the duty to practice family planning.”

As the generation of single children affected by the policy started to get married, many places in China gradually began to loosen up birth control policies, allowing an increasing number of couples to have two children.

By Horace Lu at www.shanghaiist.com