ON FRIDAY, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province announced that local workers who are the only child of a family can enjoy paid leave of up to 20 days a year if their parents have to be hospitalized. Heilongjiang is the sixth province to adopt such a policy. Rednet.com comments:

Those who are a single child face a dilemma should their parents get sick and be admitted to hospital: If they choose to take care of their parents, they have to ask for unpaid leave and their request might be rejected; if they choose to continue working, their parents' treatment might be affected because they are not there to make decisions. Besides, elderly parents might suffer psychologically when they are in hospital but their children cannot come to visit them. Worse, parents might die before their children are able to visit them.

However, the new leave will be an extra burden on enterprises, because employers will still have to pay any employees taking the additional leave. Worse, some enterprises might try to avoid employing those who are the only child of their family in order to save the cost.

In order to avoid such a situation, local governments need to ensure that enterprises don't bear the additional cost alone. For example, local governments could reimburse enterprises, or grant them tax incentives, according to the number of their staff members who apply for the new leave, so the additional financial burden is shared. It was a decadelong official policy that couples should have one child only. Now the local governments are obliged to help those who followed that policy.