China Focus: Second children put China's public services to test

To have a second child or not is the question of many young Chinese couples as they hesitate before facing the fierce competition for public services.

Huang Xiaoli, a mother in Hefei, Anhui Province, was excited when she heard about the second-child policy in October. Building on the happiness brought by their child, she and her husband were eager to have another, but their enthusiasm quickly went cold as they tried to find a kindergarten for their first born. "Public kindergartens are too far; good private ones too expensive; others are substandard."

"How can we have another child when it is so hard to find a kindergarten for the one we already have?" Huang said.

China's public service system developed in tandem with the strict one-child policy.

Annual child births have increased by about one million since couples without siblings were allowed to have a second child in 2013.

Now, any couple can have two children and the birth rate is expected to grow, straining already burdened public services, especially education.

In Hefei's Nanqi residential area of 90,000 people, only a few dozen families had a second child before the new policy was introduced, now the number has grown to more than 400, local social worker Yu Zhiqiang said.

The residential area has ten kindergartens, five primary schools and one high school but no junior middle school. "We can barely meet the need for education at the moment, but problems will emerge as more children reach school age."

"Today's parents are not be satisfied with just having enough schools, they want good ones," Wang Ming, chief of the elementary education research at the Ministry of Education.

In addition to building more schools, it is vital to improve the quality and competence of teachers, Wang said.

As more children grow up, there will be an urgent need for preschool education. Building more kindergartens is a top priority, he added.

If the search for kindergarten curbed Huang's enthusiasm for a second child, the endless queue for obstetric checks was a deadly blow. She has neither time nor stamina to wait in line. Competition is unbearable, before the second child is even conceived.

Since the policy change, family planners tasked to prevent births have turned into medical workers. "As our work changes, we have to learn new skills," said long time family planner Luo Qiao.

Luo and her colleagues have to organize lectures and workshops on maternal health, care and immunization of newborns as well as pre-pregnancy medical checks.

Many women over 35 are now planning a second child, bringing different challenges, Luo said.

China's healthcare in general will be burdened with much greater demand in the long term. People in Nanqi already need to travel long distances to bigger hospitals as the area has only one public clinic and five small private clinics.

The second-child policy may give rise to even more social problems such as discrimination against women in the job market, as employers seek to avoid losses incurred by maternity and lactation leave.

"China needs to modify its laws and policies, enhance social security and improve public service to adapt to the expected and unexpected changes brought out by the second-child policy," sociologist Fan Hesheng said. Endi