(UEFS 2014- Meio do ano)TEXTO:Chinas one-child pol

(UEFS 2014 - Meio do ano)

TEXTO:

China’s one-child policy

China’s top legislature approved resolutions to officially amend its controversial one-child policy. The changes to the one-child policy will mean couples will be allowed to have two children if one of the parents was 5 an only child, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Currently, both parents must be sole children to be eligible for a second child.

The one-child policy, which started in the 1970s, is believed to have prevented some 400 million births, 10 according to Xinhua. Although the policy has been applauded by many for slowing down China’s rapid population growth, it has also been widely criticized for resulting in forced abortions and hefty fines for families.

Some critics say the law hurts China’s elderly, who 15 typically rely on their children for support in old age, and even constrains economic growth as the working-age population begins to decline. Since the 1990s, the birth rate has declined, with Chinese women giving birth to an average of 1.4 to 1.6 children.

20 The world’s most populous nation will soon have too few people – or, rather, too few of the right kind of people. More than three decades of governmentmandated family planning have succeeded beyond the architects’ most grandiose dreams. Add to that the natural 25 inclination of richer, more educated people to limit their family size, and China’s population growth is projected to gradually diminish within fifteen years. That would leave the People’s Republic with a distorted population: too few youths, too few women and too many elderly.

30 Off icials say the easing of the one-child policy does not mean China is ending its family planning. “China still has a large population. This has not changed. Many of our economic and social problems are rooted in this reality,” said Jiang Fan, a National People’s Congress 35 deputy, in Chinese media. “We cannot risk the population growing out of control.”

PARK, Madison. China’s one-child policy. Disponível em: <http:// www.cnn.com/2013/12/28/world/asia/china-one-child-policy-official>. Acesso em: 13 jun. 2014. Adaptado.

The birth rate in China has __________ since the end of the last century.

According to the text, the alternative that completes the blank correctly is