Speaking at the current synod on youth taking place in Rome, Bo says during synod he was reflecting on the situation for young people in Myanmar.

He says the position young people in Europe are in is "quite different" from young people in Asia.

This is especially so in Myanmar, he says where "with the help of some religious congregations and the Church, we are focusing on saving young women and girls from human trafficking."

Women, he said, are trafficked "from Myanmar to Thailand, and especially from Myanmar to China. Read more

On Friday, Reuters reported China was going to ease family planning restrictions allowing millions of families to have two children.

Ruters called it the country's most significant liberalisation of its strict one-child policy in about three decades.

However critics say the relaxation does not address the human rights violations at the policy's core.

"The core of the policy is coercion," Reggie Littlejohn, told CNA on Friday.

"The problem is, that the government is telling people how many kids they can have, and it is enforcing that limit coercively, including forcibly aborting women up to the ninth month of pregnancy."

"While we are glad for the second babies who will be born under this adjustment, instituting a two-child policy in certain, limited circumstances will not end forced abortion or forced sterilisation.

"The problem with the One Child Policy is not the number of children 'allowed.' Rather, it is the fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is telling women how many children they can have and then enforcing that limit through forced abortion, forced sterilisation and infanticide.

"Even if all couples were allowed two children, there is no guarantee that the CCP will cease their appalling methods of enforcement", said Ms Littlejohn.

"Further, instituting a two-child policy will not end gendercide.

"Indeed, areas in which two children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of females."

According to the 2009 British Medical Journal study of 2005 national census data, in nine provinces, for "second order births" where the first child is a girl, 160 boys were born for every 100 girls.

The policy was implemented in the 1970s to control population growth. Officials now believe the policy harms economic growth and has rapidly aged the population without young people to support them.

Reuters reports China's working age population decreased in 2012 for the first time in many years.

CNA reports Wang Feng, a sociology professor at Fudan University who specialises in demographics, said the policy change will have "minimal" impact on demographics but has "substantial" political significance.

However, Ms Littlejohn characterised the policy change as "a mere tweaking" based only on economic and demographic considerations, not a rejection of coercion.

"We have not seen any reduction in forced abortion or forced sterilisation in the countryside," she said.

Sources

• Women's Rights without Frontiers
• CNA
• Wall St Journal
• Reuters
• Reuters
• Image: Prolife NZ

"The way to interpret this is that the laws are still in effect, but the judges and the policemen have all been fired," said Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing. "Soon the laws will also change."

In a move that may signal a future weakening of the policy, the State Council, China's Cabinet, said it proposed to merge the existing Ministry of Health with the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

"Saying that there is no change is a measure to save face and a recognition that they can't announce all the change in one day," said Wang.

"The National Population and Family Planning Commission was created for a single mandate of controlling population growth and now they no longer have that, those powers have been dissolved.

"What the government is doing is a major political move and they cannot make or announce all the policy changes that go along with it in one day. They know they can't dismantle everything all at once. It's going to take some time.

"It will not take long, however, for change to come. Leaders are aware of the changing demographics. The one-child policy has taken a toll on the labor force and has jeopardised the future economy….

"The family planning commission employs more than 500,000 people and it will be difficult to change this bureaucracy and what it has done for so many years.

"The people employed within the system are going to be redundant and many of them will likely leave, enabling a shifting of resources to the Ministry of Health. Those resources can be used to invest in reproductive health," Wang said.

"This is going to be an extremely difficult process."

Sources:

Xinhua

Wall Street Journal

Image: China Mike

According to official media, there will be 30-40 million more marrying-age men than women in China by 2020. If every woman decides to marry, there will still be one in every five men who fails to find a spouse.

In a parish in Wenzhou diocese, eastern Zhejiang province, a recent event for single Catholics illustrated all too well the serious gender imbalance among Chinese under 30, reported UCANews.

The 50 men who attended found they outnumbered their counterparts by a ratio of 2:1.

"There are too many wolves but too little meat," one of the men said. "The competition is acute."

The country's one-child policy and a traditional preference for male heirs has led to gender-selective abortions and adoption, considered to be the direct cause of the gender imbalance.

Father Peter Xue Ronglei, who organised the singles event, said the gender imbalance allows young women to be less concerned about getting married, but makes it harder for young men with poor family backgrounds or financial conditions to find a wife.

Lucia Zhu, a matchmaker for over 10 years, confirmed the priest's observation. "There are now more boys than girls. The boys meet their potential partners one after another cursorily, and they still think there are many girls. Indeed, girls now become more treasured," she said.

"The choices for Catholics are even smaller," Zhu said, noting that both men and women have high expectations of their future spouse in terms of family background, physique and appearance.

One participant, Joseph, told UCANews he found a woman participant appealing but he believed he has little chance because she is more academically capable than he is.

When John, another participant at the event, was asked about his criteria for a future spouse, he said: "It will be okay for me if there is someone who likes me."

Source:

UCANews

One-child policy (Wikipedia)

Image: The Epoch Times

The China Development Research Foundation proposes allowing two children for every family in some provinces from this year and nationally by 2015, and dropping all birth limits by 2020.

The Associated Press reports that some demographers see this timeline as a bold move by an organisation close to the central leadership, while others warn that the gradual approach suggested would still be insufficient to help correct the problems created by the one-child policy.

"China has paid a huge political and social cost for the policy, as it has resulted in social conflict, high administrative costs and led indirectly to a long-term gender imbalance at birth," the foundation said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The one-child policy has been in place since 1979.

Cai Yong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States, told the Associated Press that the report carried extra weight because the think tank was under the State Council, China's Cabinet.

He said he found it remarkable that state-backed demographers were willing to publicly propose such a detailed schedule and plan on how to get rid of China's birth limits.

"That tells us at least that policy change is inevitable, it's coming," said Cai, who was not involved in the drafting of the report but knows many of the experts who were.

Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an expert on China's demographics, contributed research material to the foundation's report but has yet to see the full text. He said he welcomed the gist of the document that he's seen in state media.

It says the government "should return the rights of reproduction to the people", he said. "That's very bold."

Associated Press

Image: Allianz Wissen

Recent reports of local officials coercing women into late-term abortions have prompted an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are trying to push central government officials to change or repeal the law that penalises families for having more than one child.

Pressure is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China's aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labour will slow the nation's economic growth rate.

"An aging working population is resulting in a labour shortage, a less innovative and less energetic economy, and a more difficult path to industrial upgrading," said He Yafu, a demographics analyst.

Beyond debate about the law itself, critics say that enforcement of the one-child policy leads to widespread abuses, because many local governments reward or penalise officials based on how well they keep down the population.

The New York Times says the talk on Chinese microblogs and articles in state-run newspapers on forced-abortion cases suggest that the one-child policy is being questioned more widely than in recent years.

Last month it was sharply criticised by scholars and policy advisers at a forum at Peking University co-organised by the National Bureau of Statistics to discuss the results of the 2010 census.

Scholars at the meeting were outraged by the plight of Feng Jianmei, who was forced to have a late-term abortion in early June. Her case became widely known after photographs of her dead seven-month-old unborn child were posted on the Internet.

"I think the right to have children is the right of a citizen," said Zhan Zhongle, a law professor at Peking University who has sent a petition signed by scholars and business executives to the National People's Congress urging its members to repeal the one-child law.

China's population of 1.3 billion is the world's largest.

Source:

New York Times

Image: Made in China