Interesting article
BEIJING — China's one-child policy has prevented almost half a billion births but has turned into a demographic time bomb as the population ages, storing up huge economic and social problems for the country.
As the world's population hits the seven billion mark, straining the earth's resources, China can claim to have curbed its birth rate to around 1.5 children per woman since the policy was introduced in 1979.
Without the birth limits, which no other country applies as rigorously or on such a scale, the world's most populous nation would have hundreds of millions more mouths to feed than the 1.34 billion it has now.
But from modern cities to remote villages, its implementation has involved abuses from mass sterilisation to abortions as late as eight months into the pregnancy. Baby girls have also been abandoned and killed.
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