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Family planning, after decades of enforcement, is to be basically changed, w

游客2024-11-16  0
问题     Family planning, after decades of enforcement, is to be basically changed, which may make a huge stir in our society. Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should:
    1. summarize briefly the excerpt about this issue;
    2. give your comment.
    Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
                Family Planning
    When China eased its one-child policy late last year, investors bet on a surge in demand for everything from pianos to nappies. They, and government officials, foresaw a mini-boom after long-constrained parents were allowed a second go at making babies.
    So far, however, it is hard to identify a bedroom productivity burst. About 270,000 couples applied for permission to have a second child by the end of May, and 240,000 received it, according to the national family-planning commission. It means China will fall well short of the 1m -2m extra births that Wang Peian, the deputy director of the commission, had predicted.
    The problem is partly bureaucratic. China announced the relaxation of the one-child policy in November; if at least one of two parents is a single child, the couple may have two children. Provinces began implementing the new rule only in January. Fearful of a baby boom that would overwhelm hospitals and, eventually, schools, they have made the application process cumbersome. In the eastern city of Jinan, for instance, would-be parents must provide seven different documents, including statements from employers certifying their marital status. With 11m couples suddenly eligible to have a second child, some caution over easing policy may be understandable. As the process is simplified, more parents will choose to go through it. Analysts expect additional new births to rise toward lm a year over the next decade or so. That is on top of today’s average of 16m births a year.
    All the same, the government and investors have overestimated the pent-up demand for babies. As in wealthier countries, preferences in China have shifted markedly towards smaller families. The cost of raising children has soared in cities, where competition to land a good kindergarten place is fierce. Costly housing puts a premium on living space. Analysts at Credit Suisse, a bank, reckon it takes roughly 25,000 yuan ( $4,030) a year to raise a young child. That is equivalent almost to the average annual income in China.
    The legacy of China’s one-child policy, now over three decades old, exacerbates the problem. Grandparents are traditionally a fixture in Chinese households helping to raise the young. But with couples waiting till later in life to have children, some parents find that they are looking after both their elders and their newborn. As single children, they have no siblings to lighten the load. Liu Gang, a 31-year-old events organizer in Beijing, says he would like a second child, but his wife now has to spend months at a time in Qingdao, her hometown, to take care of her sick father. The government is investing in both day-care centres and nursing homes, but provision is woefully short.
    China’s fertility rate has fallen to an estimated 1. 5 children per couple, in line with the European average but below the 2. 1 that maintains a constant population and is more normal for a country at China’s stage of development. With China ageing quickly, a higher birth rate is needed to underpin long-term social and economic stability. In the past, the state used harsh methods to stop its citizens having babies. In the future, it will have to find clever ways to encourage people to have babies. Other countries, not least neighbouring Japan, have struggled with that.
    Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.
选项
答案                 My Views on Family Planning
    Wei Jiajia is a typical Chinese seven-year-old girl. She loves Barbie and Ken dolls; she is a piano fanatic and has lessons twice a week. In a few months’ time, however, she will become rather less typical. She will have a brother or sister—something most urban Chinese children lack.
With the ease of China’s one-child policy, the expected baby-boom has not duly arrived for several reasons, such as bureaucratic process and the high cost of raising children. Most importantly, sandwiched between looking after both their elders and their newborn, the mid-generation find the new policy less appealing. Unless more wise measures are taken, this family policy, which aims at solving the long-term social and economic problems, is doomed to end up in failure.
    Against our expectation, statistics show that the richer a nation becomes, the lower the birth rate it has. Now, the fertility rate in China is among the lowest in the world, at around 1. 6—far below the level of 2. 1 to keep the population steady. So the government has tweaked its previous family policy not only out of sympathy for lonely children or for parents who want a spare heir, but also for the pressing population crunch. Yet the soaring cost and hassle of raising children successfully extinguish parents’ enthusiasm for a second child. For example, the skyrocketing fees charged by first-class kindergartens and schools and the mammoth housing prices within the vicinity of them are certainly eating much of the parents’ paychecks. Worse still, due to the prevalent trend of late marriage and late birth, the grandparents, who are supposed to move in to take care of their grandchildren, are usually not sprightly enough to deal with two children.
    To summarize, unless coupled with other powerful backup welfare plans, this new policy will turn out to be a woe rather than a balm for generations to come.
解析 本题探讨的是中国的“二孩”新政策，属于社会生活类话题。题目要求简要概括所给材料并发表自己的评论。在具体行文方面，考生可以开篇点题，简要概括材料内容；然后提出自己对这一问题的看法并给出充分的论据支撑；最后总结全文，重述论点或者升华主题。
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