Editor's Note:

China has recently been convulsed by a wave of repulsion against the harsh enforcement of the family planning policy in some grass-roots areas. Local authorities forced women to have late-term abortions, and the graphic pictures shocked the public and embarrassed local officials. The latest case that caused public controversy was in Yuxi, Yunnan Province, where a woman named Tang Leqiong exposed online last week that she was forced to have an abortion in 2005 while eight months pregnant. But local authorities later responded that the abortion was legal under government policies. Is the family planning policy outdated? How can it be carried out in a humane way? The Global Times invited two experts to give their thoughts.

Forced abortions have actually distorted the original intentions of the one-child policy. The local officials who forced pregnant women to have abortions were not in accordance with the law.

Family planning is a fundamental State policy. But the Population and Family Planning Law also says that citizens who give birth and are not in compliance with the provisions of the law should pay a social maintenance fee, and that people who fail to uphold the law should be criticized.

These are the only powers the enforcers of the law should have, not forcing abortions.

Forced abortions are enforcing the law by deviating from the rules. Their actions were absolutely wrong. In many cases, a correct policy becomes controversial because of blunders in implementation. People should recognize that the one-child policy doesn't encourage enforcers to use violent means such as forced abortion.

Such incidents, which demonstrate the misconduct of a few officials in implementing the population control policy, are not the inevitable results of one-child policy.

China's one-child policy has been contradictory and double-sided. But its contribution should not be simply negated.

China is a populous country, and one with a relative scarcity of resources. For instance, per capita coal and hydropower resources are only 50 percent of the global average. Per capita oil and natural gas resources are about 67 percent of the global average, and in arable land per capita, China has a mere 30 percent of the global average.

It is difficult to conceive of the resource pressures China would face without the one-child policy.

There are other routes to population control. For instance, higher education is linked to lower fertility rates.

The National Urban-Rural Resident Fertility Desire Survey in 2002 conducted by the China Family Planning Commission shows that if there is no one-child policy, people with no elementary education whatsoever would desire an average of 2.7 children, while people with a university education would only want 1.72 children.

All these above-mentioned numbers are far less than the averages in pre-modern China.

The traditional concepts of "the more sons, the more happiness" has been gradually replaced by "fewer and healthier births" in economically advanced regions. However, in some backward areas, people still pursue more children. Therefore, the size of population would still be influenced without one-child policy.

Zhang Weiqing, former minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission has estimated that China's current population would have increased by 400 million without the one-child policy.

If that happens, our reform and opening-up process would have been influenced by the pressures of population, and the growth of the national economy would have seriously slowed down.

Freedom of procreation remains the ideal. However, as China's current situation stands now, the cancellation of the one-child policy would be certain to bring enormous pressure to national financial and social resources.

Now the question is: Are we ready to face these consequences?

The author is a professor in School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn