Since 1979, China held a policy forcing couples to stop after their first pregnancy. They just announced its change to a new limit of two kids per family. Meanwhile, people all along have had forced abortions and secret babies. Hit the jump to find out how this will impact China.

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China implemented this one child policy in 1979 to cap the size of their gargantuan cities. Rural communities got to have up to two children all along- if the first was a girl. As you can imagine, this put a low value on girls.

Chinese families thus had many secret daughters. Other families abandoned daughters and had abortions until they got pregnant with a male. Everyone wants their family name continued. So, the male population now looks much larger than the female Chinese count.

This one-child policy allegedly prevented around 400 million births. With about one in three Chinese people over age 50, the Chinese population need to reseed.

Source: BBC