The scrapping of China's decades old controversial one-child policy and allowing all couples to have two children is unlikely to change demographics of the world's most populous nation, experts in the US said today.
Jeremy Lee Wallace, an associate professor at Cornell University government department, said the change is a "boon" for human rights, but it will not radically alter demographics trends.
"From now on, couples that already have a child will not have to contemplate paying large fines, fleeing their jobs or the country, or terminating a pregnancy that they would like to see come to term," Wallace said.
"However, fertility rates are unlikely to skyrocket in ways that will slow down China's rapid ageing. Birth rates were already declining before the policy was implemented, and surveys suggest few parents today believe that they can afford a second child in China's expensive urban areas," he said.
"While China's new policy will be welcome news to couples wishing for more than one child, the new population control rule is unlikely to mitigate the serious demographic problems facing China or end the human rights abuses committed against the Chinese people," said Sarah Torre and Olivia Enos in a to-be-released research issue brief by The Heritage Foundation - a US think-tank.
China has not learned its lesson over the past 35 years of the one-child policy. The new two-child policy is merely an extension of China's "dangerous habit of coercively controlling family size," they said.
Former chief economist at Ernst & Young, William Wilson, said the end is not in sight for the demographic challenges as, according to his analysis, by mid-century only 1.1 people of working age will be available to support each non-working-age person.
Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America alleged that China continues to oppress woman.
"How pathetic that the authoritarian Communist regime in China thinks they deserve a pat on the back for magnanimously 'allowing' women to give birth to two instead of one child. This goes to the very heart of individual liberty," she said.
China continues to oppress women through forced abortion and other human rights violations.
Chinese data show an average of 35,000 abortions are performed per day and according to Steven Mosher, President of Population Research Institute, most of the millions of abortions carried out in China are done forcibly, Nance said.
"The US State Department must more forcefully press for reform in China. However, as the US's largest creditor, we clearly come at this from a point of weakness. The members of Concerned Women for America will continue to pray for freedom for the Chinese people," Nance said.
