and they're trying to crush any voice, it challenges the dictatorship. in our case, journalists who hope how to account president ortega, who controls all of nicaragua institutions and who has the support of cuba and been his whaler, is running for a 4th consecutive terms. and just like in his way, la opposition will soon have to decide whether to compete at all actions that they say have already been decided to see a human al jazeera. ah, this is, and i'll just 0. and these other job stories europe's top disease agencies urging leaders to think about supplying vaccines to put our nations before inoculating their young people. jobs for lower risk young adults are being rolled out despite many countries struggling to get enough supplies. the head of the world health organization is pushing for additional funding to buy more vaccines for put on

nations tomorrow. callbacks, call it by god we said p and joe, alongside key implementation partner units have aimed to raise critical new funds at its m. c. summit to further diversified portfolio and buy additional vaccines for low and lower middle income countries. fully financing callbacks and act is key to ending the increasingly to track funding me. and i time for the government of japan for hosting the mc summit. so i think seizures struggling with a surgeon corona virus infections malaysia has imposed a nationwide to weak lockdown or vietnam is suspending international flights and testing all 9000000 people living in human city. more than 90 percent of people in ethiopia, northern gray region are in need of emergency food aid. that's the morning from the world food program. thousands have been killed and 2000000 others have been forced

out of their homes since fighting began in november. the european union invoice for the palestinian chatter tree is calling for international support in rebuilding gaza after last month, 11 de bombardment by israel. more than 250 palestinians lost their lives and infrastructure was destroyed. a fire. this lasted for 13 days in a cargo ship, in sure lanka has finally been extinguished, has been described as the country's worst ecological disaster. the vessel was carrying large amounts of toxic, nitric acid and micro plastics. much of it spilled overboard, causing widespread damage to beaches and sea life school officials and nigeria have confirmed that 136 students are missing after non group attacked and his lunch school in the state of missouri, one person was killed and another was critically injured. parents have been reunited with some of the younger children who were released and those are the headlines. the news will continue here on all just 0 after inside story. goodbye

me. ah, ah, ah ah, 1st that was the one child policy. then it became 2. now, couples and china are allowed 3 children, but will this be enough to reverse falling birth rate and deal with a rapidly aging population? this is inside story. ah. hello and welcome to the program. i'm a hammer, jim jones, the world's most populous country, is facing a crisis. chinese population is aging rapidly. more people are reaching retirement

age, and soon there won't be enough young people to replace them in the workforce. worried about the implications for the economy, china's relaxed it's infamous one child policy and allowed couples to have 2 children. but this wasn't enough to boost population growth. so the government is now pushing a 3 child policy. but many people say they can't afford to have more children. we'll bring in our guests at a moment. first, this report by katrina, you engaging as thousands of children participate in activities across china to celebrate the countries children's day. it's leaders announced a policy shift encouraging families to have more of them. chinese couples can now have up to 3 children. it comes just weeks after national census results pointed to the slowest population growth in decades. the workforce is also rapidly shrinking with roughly 20 percent of people. now over the age of 60 and analysts say this

could hom, china's economic growth, go with it. this will lead to the chinese economy. losing is vitality. there is an aging problem with threat has not only china's economy, but his defense and foreign policy. previously, the chinese government predict the economy would be double in 2035. compare with 2020, but that will be mission impossible. now. they ging ended it's decades long, one child policy in 2016 raising the child limit to to the dis, failed to significantly boost the number of children being born. china's birth rate has fallen for the 4th year in a row. 12000000 babies born in 2020 short of government expectations. chinese social media pages are full of comments about the new 3 child limit. many a critical or ridiculed governance dramatic policy turnaround from the 1900. 80 until 2016 millions of women were subject to find and even force abortion and sterilization of having one child. in 2014 liberty film directed john the mall was

find more than $1000000.00 for having 3 children. though these penalties no longer apply, china's rising cost of living remains a barrier for families. many are unable to afford having more than one child. increasingly educated women are also putting off all foregoing having children together, largely because of workplace discrimination. if the state really wants the birth rate, the crude birth rate to increase, it has to produce more welfare. the government will delay the retirement age and offer support to families who have more children, but to avert a looming democratic crisis. some say it may be too little, too late. katrina, you all to 0 paging. the now right, let's bring in our gifts in shanghai. don, one chief economist, that hung sing, bank china and hong kong, stewart, google,

boston professor of social science and public policy at the hong kong university of science and technology. and in washington, d. c. sophie richardson, china director at human rights watch a warm welcome to you all down. let me start with you today. do you think that this new policy is actually going to increase the birth rate in china as much as the government would like it to? i don't think so because if you look at the policy i introduced 4 years ago about a 2 child policy, it has only brought in about 5000000 new babies and increased the birth rate temporarily from 1.5 to 1.7. but then the policy impact dissipated very quickly. 3 years later. so this time i think this new policy probably will bringing about 2000000 more babies that taught. the overall birth rate won't change as much. stewart, what do you say is this new policy likely to alter china's demographic trends?

no, i would agree with. with that, i don't think that it's going to make a massive change to the overall population structure of china. whether or not we use looking at the survey that we have weight suggest a very little appetite for 3 or 4 children, or even just looking across the region. this is shiny population becomes more and more modernized and more similar to all the heritage around the region. of course, the appetite for such large family is really just not there. so human rights watch has just released a report that found pervasive discrimination under trying to child policy. what specific kinds of discrimination are you detailing in the report? well, that's the report. it looks primarily at pregnancy related discrimination in employment . in a nutshell that employers don't want to hire women who either haven't had children all or have only had one child because they don't want to have to deal with people

asking for maternity leave. and of these recent developments, it's or view that it's not just a question of the state getting out of trying to regulate reproductive rights at all. it's also a question of dealing with this kind of discrimination. leveling the playing field around, things like paternity leave and really giving people the full set of rights that they need to both be parents and participate in the economy. that i just want to expand a bit more on what sophie was saying there and talk a little bit more about potential examples of discrimination in the workplace from your vantage point. what kind of impact is this new 3 child policy going to have when it comes to discrimination that women face in the workplace, in a, in china. and does this have the potential to either increase or decrease that discrimination? well, for chinese companies,

they practically have no incentive to hire that many women child their age because it's a very realistic problem. they're not getting compensated for all the extra cost. just think about the 2 maternity leave and now there's 3 maternity leave. i can understand why companies don't want to incur that cost. and one extra point which i want to point out is that there is a tradeoff between having extra babies and a women's right to work on. because we know that china has one of the highest women's participation retail work. and ironically that's because of the one top policy, the parents money had nowhere to go. but how to spend on that one child, even if it's a girl. so women to women gosh, better educated and they went to work and you're working so much on so many of them decided to have fewer children. but now there is this increased incentive from the

government side to push more women to have more kids. and we know that there is still a deeply entrenched departure in china that women do most of the house work. so i'm afraid with more babies being born. a lot of women will have to decide whether they can stay in the workplace anymore. a lot of them may have to quit, quit their job and return to the housewife stuart. even if people in china where to start having more babies immediately, this isn't going to have any kind of immediate impact on the underlying issues. is it? i mean, you're not going to see any real impact for a while, because if you're talking about, you know, babies now that still another at least 20 years before those people would enter the workforce. right? yeah, that's absolutely right. it's very easy to get the babies don't actually work.

right, babies don't pay tax. and so any babysitter born under this new policy change, they're not going to enter the labor market realistically until the early twenty's 40. by which time course, many things will be different. the labor market will be different, the entire systems and social security will be different than the 5 year plan, not only the 5 year plan currently, and we'll work through that. and then the next full year, find your plans. we'll, we'll go through the more of course, the problems which exist at the moment. i'm just going to become a database so that the urban pension fund, for example, the chinese academy social sciences don't suggest that that's going to come on stock possibly come on in solving by 2035 to having more babies is not going to fix the pension system, i have more babies is not going to increase productivity. how many more babies is not going to to improve the health care system across the country. so it

requires a lot more holistic perspective in a longer term. so if you want to talk about another issue for a moment, i mean, you have now chinese authorities that are encouraging women to have more children and to raise birth rates in the country. but that's not happening in every part of the country, right? i mean, china has been accused of forcing women of muslim ethnic minorities to have fewer babies to suppress their population growth. the chinese government, of course, denies this, but what is human rights watch found on this issue? well, maybe the best way to answer that question is to point out a concern that really sort of links these 2 issues. what's happening to we years and other target muslim communities? what's happening with the decision to shift 2 or 3 child policy you 10 years ago we've been having this discussion. i think we probably all would have agreed that the abolition of the to child policy to move to the retail policy was inconceivable

. but we probably also would've agreed the chinese government committing crimes against humanity in against target communities with equal possible. but i think one concern is now watching government policies and on reproductive rights is the prospect that the authorities may start. why doing women to have children that will go from having impositions on the number of children that you have to requiring people to have certain numbers of children. and we've seen reproductive policies play out in different regions. but there are concerns about for sterilization and other reproductive related abuse is done the fact that the population in china is aging and that the available labor pool is shrinking. what are the ramifications of that for china's economy overall? the immediate impact is that there will be declining trends in consumption and the

aging population means the innovation capacity will also be declining in a few years. but then for the long term, i actually think the declining population is more of a blessing than a curve for china. otherwise, unemployment will become a bigger problem. if we look, has china labor market now for many of the sectors, we're having a labor surplus problem, not a labor shortage offer example. if you look at the industry, usually the quarter age is cap at $35.00. if you're about 35 years old, you're not going to be hired by many companies as a coder and as a researcher for college. and then that's similar situation. 35 years is basically age. so for the next 10 years to china's program to replace humans with machine will only accelerate. so we'll see a temporary or shortage in the last workers along the assembly line. but over time,

this won't be a big problem. so there is a problem still remains to be how do we solve the pension problem, 20 years down the road? because according to un estimate around 2035, that's the year we'll see a peak in china, the aging population. and that's where the real challenge began. stewart, you touched on this a little bit in your last answer, but i just want to ask, i mean, are the reasons that people in china aren't having more children, comparable to the reasons that people are having more children in east asia in places like south korea, or japan or singapore? yeah, i think there's a lot of similarities, particularly in urban areas and, and actually to go back to that issue about about discrimination in the workplace and pregnancy discrimination. you know, this is kind of, i would say, yes,

of course. this is a problem and it's a real issue, but it's really symptomatic of the kind of attitude among many employees, i think across the region which are just not supportive of families in supporting the women making the who are trying to balance work and family. and so there's that kind of playing out of both the power dynamic, but also this, this, this very kind of skew, gender approach as well. and the rate the reasons are in china is across, across the rest of the region are related to the kind of the direct costs of child bearing of child rearing, the education, particularly extra curricular education is very expensive. but then also the difficulties of just getting started in life is getting, getting the house of getting the decent job of getting, getting

a lot of strong conflict. and then compared to that, you want to have these very high opportunity costs. as i said before, particularly for women's work and so women's career and this is really something common in, in china, urban china, but also across the region. but even is not even in urban is only, you know, very highly paid, highly skilled women who be talking about this is even in the countryside that you know. and that's why the expectation of kind of 3 or 4 child damage in the countryside. i think he's bought the misplace that in the country side, we see many, you know, the majority of people want to may want to give the children a better opportunity than they themselves. so that means investing more in one or 2 children to give them the opportunity for education and to get a good job rather than spreading these resources more than the. so i think if we do say a bump in the number of children that i suspect you might well actually be in the

hiring come brackets rather than in the lower brackets, which i think many people are afraid that that would be this kind of baby group there, so if i saw you nodding along to a lot of woods where it was saying there, did you want to jump in and add to the point he was making? just to say that i think the, the experiences that we've just detailed in the new report really support and what stuart and long have said about who might benefit. or i should say this way. who might take advantage of these policies. but it's also so interesting to look at as we detailed from the state propaganda recent way, that is not just encouraging women to have a 2nd child, but really encouraging them to return to the home. and the mother is in play these very traditional social roles. and when a 3rd child announcement came through over the weekend, we are very close play watching some of the commentary on chinese social media. and

you know, and it wasn't just making fun of the decision and saying, wait, and what about all the abuses that people suffer? one child policy. but it also really flagged up a lot of concerns about inequality and who would be able to take advantage of this policy and who wouldn't. and i think it, it really speaks to the point about higher income people versus what, what already extremely limited opportunities are available to people at the lower end of the income spectrum. down the government is also promising to increase support for families. and they've indicated that they would boost some workplace protections. what might, what might we expect to see as a result? i think one of the biggest, the move is changing the tax system. because in the past there was no tax return for families with multiple children. and then there's also no tax break for companies, the higher women of childbearing age, i think this will change very quickly. and then on top of that,

there will be some social campaign to have more support towards women towards family that needed help. and i think it's relatively easy for government to feel more schools and more hospital, but it's extremely difficult for them to provide low cost housing. they need to figure out a way to provide sufficient housing for bigger families. and many of them will have to deal with the fact that education might be too expensive for their children to attend. so their route the reallocation of the education resources among different record of income. it's also going to be of very difficult issues. resolved. stewart from your perspective, is it at all likely that the chinese government, whatever completely scrap all of the restrictions in place on how many children

people can have? i think i think he will likely happen, but i think it will take time. i mean the, the, the announcement that we saw yesterday, i mean, it's really that kind of, it just the late this change, i guess it's really what 1984 mean like one child policy me right at the very start the 980 piece. the 1st change came in in 191984, which allowed another certain group to have 2 children and i think gradually changes all the time. and so i think that we will see that gradual shift but, but remember, it's not about scrapping the one child policy of the to child. it's, it's, it's about refining or changing or adapting or even improving base these policies. and you've got to realize that, you know, mean like there are many, many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of officials at the local level of card is at the local level

. who need to be a need to adopt and need to reorder into this new low facility scenario having less work to do frankly. but then also in, in some cases are going from kind of restricting towards supporting and then, and also he talks about the nature of as chinese politics and chinese policy. as a, you know, kind of scrapping any policy completely in some ways make some kind of gesture or also some information about how successful the policy work in the past. and so it's always make sense rather than just getting rid of something will gradually say this check, but i would anticipate that maybe we'll go or child at some point in the next year or so. and then remove all restrictions,

maybe like throw but on the other hand it might have been more, i don't know, but we would just have to take. so if you let me ask you, there are commentators out there who do believe that this change in policy is sort of a tacit acknowledgment by the chinese government that it's reproduction, policies in the past have failed. do you think that's the case? i don't know that they're quite saying that they have failed, but clearly they're having to grapple with the fall out of pass policies. you know, the situation exists because of the existence, the one child policy and not our view. the solution is not just scrapping the restrictions entirely, but also you know, doing the work for example of promoting the idea of paternity we use and this is high, it'll change that has parents taking equal responsibility for children for the most of the burden doesn't just fall on women, but also meaningful redraft for the kinds of employment discrimination that we're

detailing. you know, there are numerous chinese lot on the books that should prevent this from happening with the jacket, badly stacked against women. such that, you know, their best hope even in trying to take an employer to court is to get at least some kind of superficial acknowledgement that the employer was wrong to discriminate against. one of the fines that companies pay are so small that they're not likely to be deterrence. but i think there's also, you know, a real discussion to be had about the kind of horrific abuses women endured under the one child policy. the family planning authorities were notoriously abusive, you know, and actually providing some redress for that as well. done overall. what is the reaction been in china to the announcement of this new policy? and also i just want to ask me for those who grew up as part of the one child policy generation, what must they be thinking right now?

i'm part of the generation. my parents have only one child. i have to say it has been quite lonely to grew up alone. and then there's a lot of pressure to satisfy the parents expectations because they would want to grow up or get married, have child. but then with all the economic constraints, like the high housing prices, the hard top, the notification, many women are deciding to get married later if at all. and even if they get married, it's so hard to combine work with a family life. so they tend to have fewer children. i think in the future, probably we're looking at a huge trajectory for china that a population will grow at a very low rate. and women would have more flexibility actually freedom in choosing what they want, especially in urban region. the biggest problem now,

i think though, is because of this rapid organization and a rapid growth in women's education, there's a mismatch in gender. are normally what we call the laughter. we're women in china are, are highly educated, most of them. but then for the last minute, they are naturally receiving sewer and years of education. so there's a balance in the marriage market and i think that in the future we're prevent the birth rate to go back to normal trajectory. all right, well we have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave the conversation there. thank you so much to all of our guests today, don, one, stewart, google, boston, and sophie richardson and thank you for watching. you can see this and all of our previous programs again, anytime by visiting our website, algebra dot com and for further discussion, go to our facebook page at facebook dot com forward slash ha. inside story. you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is at a g inside source for me,

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