The answer might lie in Beijing’s attitudes towards its ethnic minorities, particularly those in Xinjiang.
Since 2017, the Chinese government has strictly enforced its family planning policies on minorities in the far-western province, where Beijing is accused of committing genocide against the Muslim-majority Uyghur people. The crackdown caused local birth rates to plunge by a third in 2018.
The Chinese government strongly denies allegations of genocide and says that any attempts to limit the Uyghur population fall within the country’s standard birth control policies.
Experts said Beijing is reluctant to remove all quotas on the number of children per family for several reasons. But one major factor is that ending the policy would make it much more difficult to justify Beijing’s attempts to limit the population in Xinjiang and other regions with large minority groups, which tend to have more children.
“Continuing to limit births among populations deemed problematic is certainly part…
