The claim: China announced an end to its one-child policy and will now allow couples to have three children
China’s decades-long child-limit restrictions on couples have generated controversy and misinformation on social platforms.
In 1980, China introduced a one-child policy in an attempt to slow its surging population growth. The government limited most urban couples to one child and allowed two children for rural families if their firstborn was a girl.
But one viral social media post suggests that the nationwide one-child limit in China recently came to an end and that couples can now have up to three children.
“#BreakingNews The Chinese government has announced an end to the one-child policy and will allow couples to have up to 3 children because of the aging majority and lack of young workers,” reads a screenshot of a tweet shared to Instagram on May 31.
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The Instagram post has more than 1,300 likes and was shared by Conflict Collective News, which told USA TODAY via email that “their intern should have clarified it more but technically nothing he said was untrue.”
This claim is misleading. China said it would allow married couples to have up to three children, putting an end to its existing two-child policy.
China’s one-child policy ended in 2015
While it’s true that China is now allowing couples to have three children, the government ended its one-child policy years…
