Beijing: China's leaders announced Friday the first significant easing of its one-child policy in nearly 30 years and moved to abolish its labor camp system — addressing deeply unpopular programs at a time when the Communist Party feels increasingly alienated from the public.
Beijing also pledged to open state-dominated industries wider to private competition and ease limits on foreign investment in e-commerce and other businesses in a sweeping reform plan aimed at rejuvenating a slowing economy.
The extent of the long-debated changes to the family planning rules and the labor camp system surprised some analysts. They were contained in a policy document issued after a four-day meeting of party leaders one year after Xi Jinping took the country's helm.
"It shows the extent to which Xi is leading the agenda. It shows this generation of leaders is able to make decisions," said Dali Yang, a China expert at the University of Chicago. "This is someone who's much more decisive, who has the power, and who has been able to maneuver to make the decisions."
Far from sweeping away all family planning rules, the party is now providing a new, limited exemption: It said families in which at least one parent was an only child would be allowed to have a second child. Previously, both parents had to be an only child to qualify for this exemption. Rural couples also are allowed two children if their first-born child is a girl, an exemption allowed in 1984 as part of the last substantive changes to the policy.
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