Problems in the New Century

　　ince the 1970’s the Chinese government adopted a policy of family planning---- single-child policy---- as a basic state policy to solve this problem. Until now, this birth control policy is still implanted in our country and both positive and negative effects have been harvested.

　　With the adoption of the family planning policy, the rate of population growth has been successfully controlled. This has already brought about some satisfactory results in China. For one thing, people’s living standard has been greatly improved with our country becoming more and more prosperous, and our national economy developed steadily. Furthermore, with decreasing population, the problem of shortage of water in parts of China is solved gradually. In addition, with the low rate of birth, it goes with less energy consumption, which will benefit the overall development of our economy. Moreover, this policy has greatly reduced the financial burdens of the parents who have otherwise had more children, enabling them to focus their resources on the single child’s well-being and education.

　　However, the implementing of this policy also brings about some problems. First of all, as there is only one child in a family, the child becomes “little emperor” or “little empress” of the family, surrounded by parents and grandparents. The spoiled child can get whatever he likes and discards whatever he dislikes. This phenomenon is more popular in large cities will do great harm to the children themselves. They don’t cherish what they have got because they can easily get whatever they would like to. Worse still, in the future when they grow up, they might feel very difficult to adjust to the society or cope with the adversity. Some people also show great concern that when the single children get married, the couple have to take care of 4 old people.

　　While admitting that single-child policy does bring some negative effects on the single child, we must take it for granted that it has benefited and will continue to benefit the country. Therefore, we should carry it one and at the same time adopt some measures to avoid the adverse consequences the policy may produce.