Doctored report falsely claims Chinese couples ‘must have at least two children’ under new policy
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 21, 2021 at 09:30
- 2 min read
- By AFP Hong Kong
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The image was shared more than 140 times since it was posted here on Twitter on April 3, 2021.
The image purports to show a news report published by the state-run newspaper People’s Daily. It is dated April 1, 2021.
The Chinese-language headline in the image translates as: “A scientific understanding of population growth promotes a balanced population development in a new era -- From January 1, 2022, the one-child policy will be cancelled, each newly married couple must have at least two children.”
The image is captioned: “We warn those anti-China forces that always talk about human rights: China has human rights. We have approved that Chinese people must get married. After they get married, they must have two children!”
China imposed a "one-child" policy in the late 1970s, forcing couples to have only one baby in a dramatic effort to slow population growth.
In 2016, Beijing allowed families to have two children as fears grew about China's shrinking workforce, AFP reported.
But the relaxation of the rule is yet to produce the expected baby boom to help stall a demographic slump in a country which is getting old fast.
Comments on the posts indicated some social media users thought the purported report was a joke, while others were misled.
One wrote: “I'm very disgusted with the ‘must’ on the issue of reproduction. Everything has two sides. Do we have to go from one extreme to the other? If we bring this up later after solving the problems such as school enrollment, employment and housing, won't it be better?”
The same image was also shared here and here on Twitter; here on the Chinese social networking site Weibo; and here and here on Facebook.
The image, however, has been doctored.
Keyword searches found the image corresponds to a report published here by People’s Daily on May 30, 2019.
The original report's headline reads: “A scientific understanding of population growth promotes a balanced population development in a new era.”
The report does not reference a purported policy requiring Chinese parents to "have at least two children" from 2022.
The image in the misleading posts had been digitally altered to insert this purported announcement.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the doctored image (L) and the original People’s Daily report (R):
Further keyword searches did not find any People’s Daily report on April 1, 2021 announcing a new policy that requires at least two children for every Chinese couple.
There is also no evidence from reports by state-run media that China has announced plans for such a policy as of May 21, 2021.
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