A New Baby Boom Is Happening in China’s Smaller Cities

  • Two-child policy leads to strained hospitals, packed wards
  • Lawmaker contests calls to immediately end two-child policy
Photographer: VCG via Getty Images
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China’s smaller cities are struggling to cope with a baby boom after the nation ended its one-child policy in 2015, demonstrating that it’s too early to further relax the new two-child ceiling.

So says lawmaker Sun Xiaomei, who criticizes calls for an immediate easing of the current two-child policy, and says her visits to small cities and towns showed her that already-stretched hospitals, pediatricians and kindergartens are finding it hard to cope with increased births.