雅思阅读材料：the population of China_雅思英语阅读

雅思阅读材料：the population of China

　　Anyway, argues Joan Kaufman of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, official support for the policy is only partly to do with its perceived merits: it is also the product of resistance by Chinas family-planning bureaucracy. This has massive institutional clout . The one-child policy is their raison dtre, says Ms Kaufman.

　　Mr Wang and his colleagues argue the one-child policy should go. The target reductions in fertility rates were reached long ago. Current rates, he says, are below replacement levels and are unsustainable. The time has come for the first big step: a switch to a two-child policy. Research by his group suggests few families in China would choose to have more than two.

　　There are signs that the academics are succeeding in their campaign to make the population debate less politicised and more evidence-based. Mr Ma of the National Statistics Bureau spoke not only of adhering to the family-planning policy, but also of cautiously and gradually improving the policy to promote more balanced population growth in the country. In his comments on the census, President Hu Jintao included a vague hint that change could be in the offing. China would maintain a low birth rate, he said. But it would also stick to and improve its current family-planning policy. That hardly seems a nod to a free-for-all. But perhaps a two-for-all may not be out of the question.