My understanding is that it's often the high cost of living rather than government policy which means that couples choose not to have more than one child.
The CN gov is not addressing the living standard thing as usual, but they are “shedding load” on parents by messing with the curriculum again. There has been harsh enforcement on private tutors[0] and reheated talks about making English non-mandatory.[1] (Let’s just say without the English curriculum I will not learn many of the “skills” that lead to me posting here at all.)
And guess what? They are also backpedaling on women’s rights. They are requiring people to jump through extra red tape (managed by the gossipy “community” people!) for getting an abortion and are becoming very conservative with treating uterine fibrosis.[2] Back in the days it was only the ob/gyn requiring family signature to perform hymen-breaking examinations…[3] And relatively barrier-less elective abortions were, well, possibly one of the few upsides of that one-child thing.
Yes,it definitely was like that in the very beginning. Some couples were choosing to fly to Hong Kong and have their second child there but if your second child does not have PRC citizenship, you then have to pay more for education, healthcare and so on. So to a certain extent it is a higher cost of living for a second child. But now the policies have changed, I don't know if this is what's holding couples back anymore.
