BBC News Online has published a useful article regarding the success - or otherwise - of China's "one-child only" policy:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11404623
Interestingly, the article cites evidence that China's population growth had actually started to slow well before the implementation of the controversial approach to multiple births in the early 1980s.
Overall, the estimate is that the one-child policy might have prevented 400 million births—not insignificant when it is considered that even now China has a population of 1.3 billion. But at what cost to the country as a whole? One trend that could damage China's future aspirations to rival America as an economic superpower now lies in its rapidly aging population, with too few young people to 'look after' the old.
An earlier BBC article points out that the preference for male children engendered by the policy is rapidly leading to a major demographic imbalance, with up to 24 million Chinese men unable to find a spouse by 2020:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8451289.stm
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