In March, China's leadership announced that the Ministry of
Health and the National Population and Family Planning Commission
will merge. This has been widely seen as a downgrade in authority
for the latter commission, which oversees the implementation of
China's one-child policy. In fact, this governmental action has
raised questions about whether China's one-child policy itself
will be eventually phased out.
China's one-child policy was established in 1979. This
policy was viewed as a necessity to help alleviate poverty and
other social and economic problems that afflicted the country's
population. For comparison, China's current 1.3 billion is
about four times the 300 million population of the United
States. China's one-child policy is largely restricted to
the ethnic Han Chinese living in urban areas, while there are
certain exceptions that apply to citizens living in rural areas and
ethnic minorities. While the one-child policy has always drawn
international
