Earlier today a surprising announcement was made by China’s Communist Party that the decades-old One-Child Policy was being lifted, allowing urban couples to have two children.

The proposal, which remains to be approved by China’s top legislature, was announced through the state-run Xinhua News Agency:

“To promote a balanced growth of population, China will continue to uphold the basic national policy of population control and improve its strategy on population development. China will fully implement the policy of ‘one couple, two children’ in a proactive response to the issue of an aging population.”

Human rights group Amnesty International is not yet ready to celebrate. “Couples that have two children could still be subjected to coercive and intrusive forms of contraception, and even forced abortions — which amount to torture.
The state has no business regulating how many children people have,” said China researcher William Nee.

Of course, this being Communist China, the reasons for the relaxation in this policy are not grounded in morals or altruism. Due to its attempts at social engineering, China has met with serious consequences for its One-Child Policy, as shown in this video:

The One-Child Policy has also resulted in horrendous abuses of human rights.