BEIJING, Dec 25 — The death of a former head of China's one-child policy has been met not by tributes but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week.
State media praised Peng Peiyun, head of China's Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as an "an outstanding leader" in her work on women and children.
Yet the reaction on China's social media to Peng's death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive.
"Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there" in the afterlife, one person posted on China's popular microblog Weibo.
China's near-universal mandate of just one child per couple from 1980 through 2015 prompted local officials to compel women to undergo abortions and sterilisations.
Beijing launched the one-child policy amid concerns that population growth could spiral out of control. But China's population, long the world's highest, later slowed and last year tumbled for the third year in a row.
"If the one-child policy had been implemented for 10 years less, China's population would not have plummeted like this!" a Weibo post said.
After falling behind India's in 2023, China's population declined to 1.39 billion last year. Experts warn the downtrend will accelerate in the coming years, as the data for 2025 will be released next month.
As population czar, Peng focused her commission's work on the countryside.
In rural China, large families were once seen as a goal for couples seeking to ensure they would be cared for in their old age. Sons who could carry on the family name were also favoured, leading to unwanted infant girls and even aborted female foetuses.
"Those children, if they were born, would be almost 40 years old, in the prime of their lives," one person posted on Weibo.
By the 2010s, Peng had publicly shifted her views, saying the one-child policy should be eased. Now Beijing is trying to boost the flagging birth rate with childcare subsidies, longer maternity leave, and tax benefits.
The shrinking and greying of the population has raised concerns that the world's second-largest economy will struggle as the number of workers declines. Rising costs from elderly care and retirement benefits will also likely create additional budgetary strains for already indebted local governments.
