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Chinese parents want compensation for obeying abandoned one-child rule
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Families that obeyed the now-abandoned one-child rule lash out over lost chance to have more children and secure future. - photo by Lois M. Collins
Chinese families that obeyed the government's rule that limited them to having only one child or face penalties are pushing back since the rule has been relaxed. They want the Chinese government to compensate them for what they gave up.

"Bereaved parents are demanding more compensation from China's government, blaming the now-defunct one-child policy for robbing them of the chance to have more kids," according to an NBC News report.

In late October, China's Communist Party said all couples could have two children. According to the Associated Press at the time, "The decision is the most significant easing of family-planning policies that were long considered some of the party's most onerous intrusions into family life and which the party had gradually been undoing in recent years. The restrictions had led to an imbalanced sex ratio because of a traditional preference for boys, and draconian enforcement that sometimes included forced abortions."

In Beijing this week, parents whose only child had died and others who felt harmed by the now-defunct policy were protesting.

"I don't have any hope anymore," Zhou Ru Xian, whose 24-year-old daughter died in 2013, told NBC.

The article said she was among the protestors, adding that "hundreds of police officers later herded many of the demonstrators onto buses."

Wrote NBC's Janis Mackey Frayer, "'To follow the law I made a decision to have only one child,' said Zhou, who feared losing her job at a state-run company if she violated the controversial rule. The 53-year-old now dreads growing old alone with no one to support her."

China has demographic challenges. Before the policy changed, it was loosened in 2013, as the Deseret News reported: "China has significantly modified its one-child policy for the first time in three decades, loosening the rules to allow families in which a parent has no siblings to have a second child. The move is in response to the increasing age of the population overall and a subsequent lack of young people to support them."

It cited a WSJ article that said "the policy has been lauded by officials for taming a surging population from a years-earlier baby boom. But economists say it risks eroding China's competitive advantage, draining its labor pool of future workers as the population ages and puts a greater strain on China's emerging social safety net."

Moreover, it has created an imbalance in the number of young men and young women of marrying and child-bearing age, which will have long-term impact on fertility rates, among other things.