Outbound to GRE

Feburary 28th, 2008
From today I will read a piece of written news everyday and note down the difficult words in reading and make a list of them in the vocabulary notebook.

China to Reconsider One-Child Limit

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: February 29, 2008

BEIJING — China is studying how to move away from the country's one-child-per-couple restriction, but any changes would come gradually and would not mean an elimination of family planning policies, a senior official said Thursday.

The official, Zhao Baige, vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, told reporters at a news conference that government officials recognize that China must alter its current population-control policies.
“We want incrementally to have this change,” Ms. Zhao said, according to Reuters. “I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers.”
With more than 1.3 billion people, China is the most populous nation and is home to one of the most stringent family planning regimens. Most urban couples are limited to a single child unless they pay hefty fines. Farmers are generally permitted to have a second child if the first is a girl. Minorities are often allowed to have two or more children.
For more than three decades, the restriction on births has been a centerpiece of government economic and social policy. Local officials receive performance ratings based partly on how well residents adhere to the restrictions. In the 1980s, officials routinely forced women to abort fetuses that would have resulted in above-quota births, and both men and women were often forced to undergo sterilization operations.
Enforcement of the policy has softened markedly in recent years, with most areas relying on fines to ensure compliance. But scandals over forced abortions continue to arise periodically. The restrictions also have deepened a severe imbalance in the ratio of boys to girls in the population because many families have used selective abortions to ensure the birth of a son, the traditional preference.
Chinese officials have sought to curb the excesses and abuses and have argued that the one-child restriction has prevented roughly 400 million births and allowed the country to prosper and better live within its resources.
But China's fertility rate is now extremely low, and the population is rapidly aging, especially in urban areas. Experts have warned that China is steadily moving toward a demographic crisis with too many old people in need of expensive services and too few young workers paying taxes to meet those bills. China is often regarded as having a limitless pool of young, cheap labor, but the country's biggest manufacturing centers are already facing labor shortages.
Some of the biggest cities, like Shanghai, have tried to make small tweaks in the policy to spur more births. Nationally, the policy now allows urban couples to have two children if both spouses are from one-child families. But officials have resisted any major policy changes out of fears that a major population boom might follow. In recent months, Chinese officials have pledged to crack down on rich couples that are using their money or influence to disobey the policy.
Ms. Zhao said surveys indicated that a large majority of younger Chinese would like two children. But she warned that current plans call only for studying potential changes and that any adjustments must not lead to a rapid jump in the birthrate.
Ms. Zhao's comments come less than a week before the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled legislative body. They also come as China is trying to soften its human rights image as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympics in August.

Difficult words:
1 incrementally
2 stringent
3 regimens
4 hefty
5 tweaks
6 abase
lower; degrade; humiliate; make humble; make (oneself)lose self-respect
7 abash
embarrass
8 abate
subside or moderate abbreviate shorten
9 abdicate renounce; give up (position, right, or responsibility)
10 aberrant abnormal or deviant
11 aberration deviation from the normal; mental disorder
12 abet
assist usually in doing something wrong; encourage
13 abeyance
suspended action
14 abhor detest; hate
15 abject
(of a condition) wretched; as low as possible; lackingpride; very humble; showing lack of self-respect; Ex. abjectapology
16 abjure renounce upon oath
17 ablution washing
18 abnegation renunciation; self-sacrifice; self-abnegation