The legacy of China’s one-child policy, introduced in the late 1970s to address a huge population spurt but scrapped six years ago, has truly come home to roost. Last year, the country’s roughly 1.4 billion population declined for the first time since the Great Famine in 1961.
The fall of 850,000 people, announced Tuesday, came a decade earlier than Beijing and the United Nations had predicted and is the result of more than a million fewer babies and a large number of deaths — which some China watchers put down to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Often brutally implemented through forced abortions and sterilization, the one-child policy had widespread ramifications for Chinese society. More boys were born than girls, due to a society where men were more likely to secure an iron rice bowl…
