WUNRN
- Aug 21, 2014
A couple would need to spend 2.76 million yuan to support
a child from birth to college in
Nine
months after stock-market wagers on a baby boom in
While milk-powder producers Biostime International Holdings Ltd.
and Yashili International Holdings Ltd.
surged to all-time highs after the ruling Communist Party relaxed its one-child
policy last November, the stocks have lost at least 41 percent this year, with
Biostime leading declines in the MSCI China Index. Hengan International Group Co., a
diaper maker, has dropped 8.1 percent even as the MSCI gauge rose 5.5 percent.
Less than 3 percent of the 11 million Chinese couples
eligible for another child applied for permission by the end of May,
jeopardizing government efforts to bolster a population that the United Nations
predicts will start shrinking by 2030. Raising a child from birth through to 18
years of age costs about 23,000 yuan ($3,745) a year, according to Credit
Suisse Group AG, equivalent to 43 percent of the average household income in
“There was too much speculation about a baby boom,” Zhang Gang, a
strategist at Central China Securities Co. in
Economic Freedoms
Relaxation of the one-child policy in the world’s
most-populous nation is part of the government’s broadest expansion of economic
freedoms since at least the 1990s. The MSCI China Index has gained 8.2 percent
through yesterday since the reforms were unveiled in November, while the Shanghai Composite Index of
mainland-traded shares rose 4.9 percent and the Bloomberg China-US Equity Index
climbed 10 percent.
Biostime sank to the lowest level since July 2013
yesterday after reporting first-half net income that trailed analysts’
estimates, extending this year’s drop to 52 percent. Chaozhou City, China-based
Yashili has lost 41 percent this year, while China Huishan Dairy Holdings Co., the
milk producer backed by billionaire Cheng Yu-tung,
retreated 35 percent, the second-biggest decline on the MSCI China index.
Biostime fell 8.5 percent at the close in
Stock Valuations
Losses in dairy-related stocks have been exacerbated by
concern over the quality of milk in China, which led to reduced profit margins
as producers shifted some of their supply to costlier imports, said Ronald Wan, the chief
China adviser at Asian Capital Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong.
Declines in some baby-related shares have dragged valuations
down to “reasonable” levels, according to Templeton Emerging Markets Group’s Mark Mobius, who
declined to name specific companies.
“This is a longer-term” trend, Mobius, who oversees more
than $40 billion as the executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets, said
in
Biostime shares are
valued at 15 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months, down from a peak
of 26 in November. Huishan Dairy’s ratio of 11 is almost half its high of 20
times last year. Both are cheaper than the MSCI China Consumer Staples Index,
which has a multiple of 23.
No Nanny
Sun Qing, who works at a brokerage in northeastern
“The cost is a top consideration,” Sun, 32, said by
phone. “My four-year-old daughter is heading to school and that will mean extra
classes and higher spending. A nanny is too expensive so the grandparents look
after her. They are approaching 70 and I don’t think they can handle a second
child.”
While prices of new homes in
A couple would need to spend 2.76 million yuan to support
a child from birth to college in
Demographic Crisis
Average household income in
The confidence of couples in their ability to provide for
a second child may also be waning as
“People tend to give birth to a second child when the
macro-environment and property prices are more favorable and they have job security,”
Wan said by phone on Aug. 8.
At stake is
The latest government census
in 2010 shows 178 million Chinese were over 60. That figure may rise to 437 million
by 2050 as the population falls to 1.38 billion from a peak of 1.45 billion in
2030, according to UN forecasts.
Faster Inflation
A scarcity of workers is helping push up labor costs,
spurring companies including Samsung Electronics Co. to relocate production to
countries such as
Unless
“With a rapidly aging population and declining birth
rate, even relaxing the birth-control act now won’t help reverse the trend
anytime soon,” Hao Hong, a Hong
Kong-based strategist at Bocom, said on Aug. 15. “
To contact the reporter on this story: Weiyi Lim in
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Patterson at mpatterson10@bloomberg.net; Nikolaj Gammeltoft at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net Richard Frost, Richard Richtmyer
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women's Rights without Frontiers - http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org
China:
Two-Child Policy Will Not End Forced Abortion or Gendercide
According to a report in
Bloomberg Businessweek, Cai Fang, vice director of the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, has stated: “We will fully relax the policy” in two
years, allowing all couples to have a second child. The reason:
China’s shrinking labor pool will cause the potential growth rate to fall an
average of 6.2 percent annually from 2016 to 2020.
Reggie Littlejohn, President
of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, has responded: “The Chinese
Communist Party is finally waking up to the fact that, by instituting the
brutal One Child Policy for economic reasons 34 year ago, it unwittingly signed
its own economic death warrant. China will grow old before it grows
rich. China’s population problem is not that it has too many people, but
that it has too few young people.”
“To say that China ‘will
fully relax the policy’ is extremely misleading,” Littlejohn continued. “Allowing
all couples to have a second child does not constitute a ‘full relaxation’ of
the One-Child Policy. The problem with the One Child Policy is not the number
of children ‘allowed.’ Rather, it is the fact that the CCP is telling
women how many children they can have and then enforcing that limit through
forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide. Even if all
couples were allowed two children, there is no guarantee that the CCP will
cease their appalling methods of enforcement. Women will still need a
birth permit to have their first and second child. Women who get pregnant
without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to
tables and forced to abort babies that they want, even up to the ninth month of
pregnancy.
“Furthermore, instituting a
two-child policy will not end gendercide. Indeed, areas in which two
children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide, the
sex-selective abortion of females. According to the 2009 British Medical
Journal study of 2005 national census data, in nine provinces, for ‘second
order births’ where the first child is a girl, 160 boys were born for every 100
girls. In two provinces, Jiangsu and Anhui, for the second child, there were
190 boys for every hundred girls born. This study stated, ‘Sex selective
abortion accounts for almost all the excess males.’ Because of this
gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million Chinese men who will never marry
because their future wives were terminated before they were born. This gender
imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual
slavery, not only in China, but in neighboring nations as well.
“The Chinese Communist Party
periodically modifies the One Child Policy, but the coercion at its core
remains. Indeed, ‘One Child Policy’ is a misnomer that causes
confusion. There are numerous exceptions under which couples can have a
second child, but enforcement through forced abortion remains. It should
be called China’s ‘Forced Abortion Policy.’
“The coercive
enforcement of China’s One Child Policy continues to cause more violence toward
women and girls than any other official policy on earth, and any other official
policy in the history of the world. Those who care about women and girls
must continue to press with persistence until forced abortion and gendercide
are eradicated from the face of the earth.
“China’s Forced Abortion
Policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished.”
Watch Stop Forced Abortion – China’s War on
Women! Video (4 mins) - http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion