My apologies if I repeat anything already said, but I have only had a chance to skin the thread briefly.
I think we all appreciate that the objective of the One Child Policy was to avoid the worst Malthusian nightmare and at the same time help facilitate the transfer from a rural peasant society to a Middle Class Urban society.
It is also the case, I understand that the policy was never intended to run beyond 2020, which is the time by which the main generational migration from country to city will be largely finished.
I think we see also the mechanism by which we will get a fairly hefty economic boost as the population changes, where you have the situation where old granddad, retires or passes on, while at the same time the grandson graduates as an engineer and starts working on an appropriate graduates salary. You effectively replace an old poor generation with a young affluent one at about the same overall population level.
I know that some may argue that had there been no one child policy, China would not be running short of its supply of cheap migrant labour for its low cost manufacturing industries, but I think this misses a fundamental point, which is that the Chinese Government has a much higher aspiration for its peoples than just to be the lowest grade factory fodder forever. Neither do I suspect that such an situation would be stable beyond the short term as it would represent an impassible barrier for the aspirations of hundreds of millions and quickly degenerate into social unrest.
I think we are seeing through this kind of policy a rapid transition from agrarian to industrial happen in a few decades, where in other parts of the world it has taken centuries. We think for instance of Europe as being a modern developed, Industrial, indeed even post industrial Continent, but in reality the development is uneven and only really starting to happen in its more wild and remote corners. China is managing to coral a main development phase into a more distinct and complete time frame and trying to ensure that that the country moves forward while all more or less in developmental step.
Is it time to lose the One Child Policy?
I think many of the justifications for keeping it are coming to the end of their lives, although there are some reforms that would probably be best to get out of the way first, Hukou reform being the foremost of them.
It could be that some sort of phased lifting was possible, removing the the policy from Registered Urban Residents, but I can also see ways in which in practice this could become a bureaucratic nightmare for all concerned and general unworkable/unenforceable.
So maybe it is better just to wait a little bit longer and remove it all together in one go.