中国学者建议更改独生子女政策

A group of prominent Chinese scholars issued an open letter on Thursday calling for a rethink of the country's one-child policy, the second high-profile challenge to the long-standing law this week.

数名中国知名学者周四联名发表公开信，要求政府重新考虑中国的独生子女政策，这是中国长期实行的计划生育政策本周第二次受到公然挑战。

The group argued that the policy in its current form is incompatible with China's increasing respect for human rights and need for sustainable economic development. The letter comes less than a month after the story of a woman who was forced to undergo an abortion of her seven-month-old fetus ignited public anger.

这些学者认为，目前的政策与中国人权意识的普遍增强和经济可持续发展的需要不符。此前不到一个月，中国一名怀孕七个月的妇女被强制引产的事件引发了公众的愤怒。

"The birth-approval system built on the idea of controlling population size as emphasized in the current Population and Family Planning Law does not accord with provisions on the protection of human rights contained in the nation's constitution," the authors of Thursday's letter wrote, adding that a rewriting of the law was "imperative."

周四发表的公开信中写道，现行《人口与计划生育法》强调控制人口数量，在此基础上构建的生育审批制度既不符合我国宪法中的人权保护条款。他们还说，《人口与计划生育法》的修改势在必行。

Researchers with the Research Development Center, a prominent government-affiliated think tank, on Tuesday said in a newspaper opinion piece that Beijing should consider revising the policy. The researchers focused on China's aging population and a predicted dearth of young workers.

中国政府下属的著名智库机构国务院研究发展中心的研究员周二在报纸上发表观点文章说，中国政府应该考虑调整中国的计划生育政策。这些研究员主要讨论了中国人口老龄化以及未来可能出现的年轻劳动人口短缺问题。

The list of signatories to Thursday's letter included several high-profile figures, including Beijing University sociologist Li Jianxin and Internet entrepreneur James Liang.

在周四的公开信上签名的包括几位拥有较高知名度的公众人物，其中有北京大学(Peking University)社会学系教授李建新和互联网行业的企业家梁建章等。

"This is a time during which people all over the world have realized there are problems with the [one-child] policy," Mr. Liang, the co-founder and chief executive of Chinese online travel site Ctrip.com, told The Wall Street Journal.

中国在线旅行服务公司携程旅行网(Ctrip.com)联合创始人、首席执行长梁建章对《华尔街日报》说，现在全世界的人都意识到了独生子女政策存在缺陷。

Mr. Liang, who has spent the past five years pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University and just published a book challenging the notion that China has too many people, said he has felt a recent opening up of discussion around the one-child policy.

在过去五年里，梁建章在斯坦福大学(Stanford University)攻读了经济学的博士学位，并且刚刚出版了一本挑战中国人口过剩这一观点的书。梁建章说，他感觉到最近社会上正围绕独生子女政策展开开公讨论。

Family planning has been a hot topic of conversation on China's Internet ever since mid-June, when photographs of 23-year-old Feng Jianmei lying on a hospital bed next to her aborted seven-month-old fetus were posted online. Ms. Feng-who already has a 5-year-old daughter-was forced to terminate her pregnancy after she and her husband failed to come up with the cash to pay a 40,000 yuan ($6,300) fine for having a second child, family members said.

自6月中旬以来计划生育就成为了中国网民热议的话题。当时23岁的冯建梅躺在医院病床上、身旁放着她被强制引产的七个月胎儿的照片被放到了网上。冯家人说，已经有一个五岁女儿的冯建梅夫妇因没有能力缴纳4万元的二胎罚金而被强制引产。

The forced termination of Ms. Feng's pregnancy-for which the local government has apologized-drew widespread condemnation and prompted calls to eliminate the one-child rule.

冯建梅被强制引产一事引发外界广泛谴责，并促使外界呼吁取消独生子女政策。当地政府已经向冯建梅道歉。

The letter from Chinese scholars, though it gestured at the ominous economic implications of the policy, focused on issues of law and reproductive rights, specifically referring to Ms. Feng's forced abortion. "Behind these incidents are clear limitations and defects in the nation's family planning laws," it read.

这15位学者的公开信虽然也谈到了计划生育政策可能给经济带来的影响，但此信主要谈论的还是法律和公民的生育权问题。公开信还特别谈到了冯建梅遭强制引产一事。信中说，此事也凸显了我国现行《人口与计划生育法》的某些局限性及立法缺陷。

Mr. Liang, who advocates a complete dismantling of the family-planning system rather than a two-child system put forward by others, said he initially became interested in the one-child policy when he came across research showing that innovation and entrepreneurship are dominated by young people. He said he feared a shrinking of the population of young people would hamper the country's efforts to evolve beyond being merely the world's factory.

梁建章说，他最初对独生子女政策感到兴趣是因为他看到一项研究表明创新和创业为年轻人所主导。梁建章认为应该完全取消计划生育政策，而不是像其他学者提出的那样实行“二胎政策”。他说他担心年轻人口的萎缩会阻碍中国的升级进步，令中国只能停留在世界工厂阶段。

"From an economic perspective, the one-child policy is irrational. From a human-rights perspective, it's even less rational," Mr. Liang said.

梁建章说，从经济角度看，一胎化政策并不合理。从人权角度看，这就更不合理。

Population experts note that prominent figures have called for changes to China's family-planning laws before, so far to little effect. China has loosened restrictions on some couples and is considering pilot schemes in several cities that would loosen the restrictions even further, but hopes for nationwide change have been dim.

人口专家指出，知名人士此前曾呼吁修改《人口与计划生育法》，不过迄今为止收效甚微。中国已经放松了对某些夫妇的生育限制，并正在考虑在多个城市进行试点以进一步放宽限制，但在全国范围内放宽限制的可能微乎其微。

That history isn't lost on Mr. Liang. "In the short term, there isn't a lot of incentive to change things," he said. "The aim is to get people thinking more about this now so that we can solve the problems in the long term."

不过梁建章并没有失望。他说，在短期内并没有多少改革的动力。但我们的目标是让人们现在更多地考虑这一问题，这样我们才能在将来解决这个问题。