Meet the parents, or pay the price
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Things are not much sweeter for their white-collar counterparts in the cities, who have to deal with high living costs in addition to rising inflation.
"I'd love to be able to visit my parents frequently, but how often is enough?" asks 35-year-old Jane Xu, a mother of two, who has lived in Shanghai for 15 years. "We'd like to get home more often, but it's easier said than done."
A return ticket to her hometown in Northeast China costs over 2,000 yuan ($302). Then there is the added cost of gifts, as Chinese people don't like to return home empty-handed. For a white-collar worker in Shanghai on a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan and with 10 days paid leave a year, this is a significant burden to bear.
If the young couple cannot afford the yearly expenditure, and if their parents become angry, will they be sued and sentenced? According to the amendment, the answer is "possibly yes".
China's family planning policy puts young couples in the position of having to support four parents and at least one child. With housing and education costs going through the roof, this new amendment looks like the straw that could break the camel's back for China's typically meek populace - hence the public backlash.
But was the amendment really necessary in the first place? According to Chinese tradition, visiting one's parents is a basic moral obligation, and few offspring shy away from this.
As China's population slowly starts to gray, legislators seem to be doing what they can to pre-empt a healthcare catastrophe as not enough workers struggle to support too many retirees. Some 167 million people are already over the age of 60, edging over the threshold of 10 percent that indicates a country is an aging society.
Given the changing dynamic of Chinese society, requiring people to conform to traditional moral standards from centuries ago is neither realistic nor reasonable.
The author is director of China Daily Shanghai News Center.
