Few expect significant reforms soon. The family-planning bureaucracy is a vast and entrenched interest group defending the status quo at all levels of government. Senior officials fear that any change would unleash a population boom, despite predictions to the contrary by most experts. With only a year to go until China’s first leadership change in a decade, no high-level figure in the central government is likely to back significant changes now. “If the government has political reasons for not being able to change the policy, then there is nothing I can do,” says Zheng Zizhen. “I can only say that from a scientific point of view, it is clear the policy needs to change.” Guangdong thinks so, too.
China's population: Only and lonely | The Economist
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