Aside from its opacity, many believe the social maintenance fees have given the rich and famous like Zhang a ticket to have as many children as they like, but deprived the poor of the same right as they can’t afford to pay heavy fines. This discrimination is one main reasons why many people have been demanding the abolition of the fees.

But despite the discrimination, any talk on its abolition seems futile, because the family planning policy provides the legal basis of its existence. The social maintenance fees can be abolished only after the final decision is made on the fate of the strict family planning policy. Without the fees, how can the authorities ensure people abide by the family planning policy?

At the end of last year, China’s top decision-makers announced the loosening of the family planning policy. Now couples one (or both) of whom is the only child of his/her parents can have a second child. But still a majority of Chinese couples are not eligible to have a second child.

The family planning policy has indeed checked China’s exploding population growth. It has also ingrained the one-child concept in many people’s minds, especially because of the ever-increasing cost of bringing up a child, and diminished their longing to have more than one child. This is indicated by the fact that only about 700,000 of the 11 million eligible couples had applied to have a second child by the end of August. Also, the sixth census conducted in 2010 shows that China’s fertility rate is only about 1.2, far below the world’s average of 2.1.

Such a low fertility rate and unwillingness of couples to have a second child highlight the severity of China’s demographic problems, in particular the accelerating aging population and the “Lewisian turning point”. They also call into question the need to maintain a targeted family planning in place in China.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. wuyixue@chinadaily.com.cn