Two little, too late

FOR more than 35 years, the Chinese Communist Party has governed the world’s most-populous nation by means of a thinly disguised threat: the country could become rich only if most couples limited themselves to having no more than one child. If they disobeyed, women were forced to undergo abortions; parents were subject to fines equivalent to several years’ income and sometimes dismissed from their jobs; in the countryside, the homes of poor peasants who could not afford the penalties were occasionally stripped of anything of value and then knocked down. The “one-child policy”, as the benighted approach to the country’s development was known, became synonymous with some of the most brutal aspects of the party’s rule. The bitter irony is that China’s problem today is too few babies, not too many.On October 29th the party belatedly decided to switch to a two-child policy. It had already been allowing this for some couples—for example, if one of the parents was an only child. Easing up a bit more, it reasoned, would help slow the country’s rapid ageing. More children would (eventually) mean more people to look after the elderly—a looming problem in a country with only a rudimentary welfare system. Once again, however, the party has miscalculated.