Beijing, China. Photo CC: Colin.
China’s infamous compulsory birth control policies were eased last year, but Global Times reporters are skeptical that this will yield many new babies: China appears to have undergone a permanent demographic transition.
When the country announced that it was further easing the family planning policy, allowing millions more women to have a second child.
Hong Kong, an ideal place for those who want to circumvent the one-child policy.
In the United States, politicians occasionally raise the specter of hordes of pregnant Latin Americans crossing the border to gain birthright citizenship for their children. Hong Kong (which has one of the lowest birth rates in the world) is a short car ride from mainland China, but worlds apart in terms of quality of life and educational possibilities; many mainland women try to time a visit to the autonomous city-state for a fortuitous birth. Mainland China’s daily Caijing discusses the territory’s supposed ‘anchor baby’ problem.
In recent years, Hong Kong has seen an influx of expectant mothers from the Chinese mainland who travel to the city to give birth.
