China’s Two-Child Policy: Fees, Exemptions, and End Date

China’s two-child policy was the national rule, in force from January 1, 2016 through August 2021, that permitted every married couple to have two children. It replaced the one-child restriction that had governed most families since 1980 and was itself replaced by a three-child limit in August 2021. During its five years on the books, it reshaped birth registration, penalty structures, and family planning enforcement in every province.

The 2015 Amendment That Created the Policy

The legal vehicle was an amendment to the Population and Family Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China, adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on December 27, 2015. Before the amendment, Article 18 stated that the government maintained a policy “advocating one child per couple,” with a second child available only under specific exceptions set by provincial legislatures.¹ The revised Article 18 replaced that language with a new standard: “The State advocates that one couple bear two children.”

The amendment took effect on January 1, 2016. It wasn’t entirely without precedent. In late 2013 the government had already allowed a second child if either parent was an only child, but that earlier relaxation applied to a limited group. The 2015 amendment made the two-child allowance universal for all married couples, no conditions attached.

The national law set the standard and delegated the mechanics to provincial and local governments. Each province updated its own population and family planning regulations, setting local rules for birth registration, spacing, and administrative procedures.

How Birth Registration Worked

Having the legal right to a second child did not mean simply showing up at a hospital. In many provinces, couples had to obtain a birth service certificate before the child was born, issued through the local population and family planning commission. The certificate served as the government’s advance acknowledgment that the birth was authorized under current policy.²

The paperwork mattered because of what came next. Without proper documentation from the family planning commission and the public health department, parents could not obtain a household registration, or hukou, for the child. The hukou determines access to public education, healthcare, and social welfare benefits, so a child without one is effectively invisible to state service systems.² Some provinces streamlined the process during the two-child era, shifting from a pre-birth permit to a simpler post-birth registration, but the core requirement of formal registration with valid identification and marriage documentation remained.

Who Could Have More Than Two Children

The two-child limit was not applied uniformly to all populations. Ethnic minorities had long been granted more generous birth allowances than the Han majority, which makes up roughly 92% of the population. Depending on the province and the specific minority group, couples from recognized ethnic minorities were often permitted three or more children under both the one-child and two-child frameworks.

Rural families operated under separate rules as well. During the one-child era many provinces allowed farming households to have a second child if their first was a daughter. Once the universal two-child policy took effect, that particular rural exception became largely moot because all couples could now have two children regardless. Provincial variation in enforcement continued, however, throughout the two-child period.

The Social Maintenance Fee

The primary enforcement tool for the two-child limit was a financial penalty called the social maintenance fee. Under Article 41 of the Population and Family Planning Law, any couple who had children beyond the permitted number was required to pay it. It was not a modest fine. The amount was calculated as a multiple of the local area’s average annual disposable income, so the penalty scaled with regional wealth. In wealthier cities, a single violation could cost a family the equivalent of several years’ income.

Local family planning bureaus had enforcement authority, and the fees were assessed administratively rather than through criminal courts. Unpaid fees could result in wage garnishment or other collection measures. Combined with the hukou consequences for unregistered children, the fee gave the two-child limit real force for families considering a third.

Career Penalties for Government Workers and Party Members

Ordinary citizens faced the social maintenance fee. Government employees and Communist Party members faced that plus possible destruction of their careers. Provincial regulations frequently mandated disciplinary action for public-sector workers who exceeded birth limits, ranging from formal warnings and demotions to termination. A demotion or party expulsion could permanently end a career in government or a state-owned enterprise, which together employ a large share of China’s workforce. In some provinces, mandatory termination provisions remained on the books even after the shift to the two-child policy, meaning a third child could cost a government worker their livelihood.³

Registration Amnesty for Unregistered Children

Decades of strict birth limits had produced a shadow population of children born outside policy who had never been registered. By the time the two-child policy took effect, an estimated 13 million people in China lacked household registration, roughly one percent of the entire population.⁴ Most were children whose parents had violated birth limits and could not pay the social maintenance fee, or who had been born out of wedlock and faced similar bureaucratic barriers.

The government addressed this alongside the two-child rollout. In late 2015 the State Council directed that registration should proceed “irrespective of family planning and other policy limits,” meaning parents no longer needed to pay outstanding social maintenance fees before registering their children.⁴ The Ministry of Public Security reported that 14.35 million previously unregistered people were added to the system in 2016 alone, with more following in subsequent years.

Why Births Kept Falling

The government’s primary motivation for relaxing birth limits was demographic. China’s population was aging rapidly, its labor force was shrinking, and the one-child policy had produced a lopsided age structure. The two-child policy was meant to reverse the decline in births.

It did not. China saw an initial bump in 2016 and 2017, largely driven by older couples who had been waiting for permission to have a second child. The surge was short-lived. By 2018 births were falling again, and the decline accelerated. Total births dropped steeply, reaching roughly 7.9 million in 2025.

The reasons had little to do with birth limits. Urban housing costs, education expenses, childcare burdens, and career pressures made many young Chinese couples reluctant to have even one child. Removing the legal barrier did not touch the financial and social barriers that had become far more powerful deterrents than any regulation. That failure is what pushed Beijing to abandon the two-child framework.

The 2021 Shift to Three Children

On August 20, 2021, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed another amendment to the Population and Family Planning Law, raising the limit to three children per couple and taking effect immediately.⁵

The 2021 amendment did more than adjust the number. It dismantled the enforcement machinery that had backed the two-child limit. The social maintenance fee was abolished nationwide, and local authorities were directed to cancel remaining rules incompatible with the new policy.⁵ The administrative penalties that had threatened government workers’ careers for birth violations were also removed. The government’s approach shifted from punishment to incentives, including tax relief, priority access to subsidized housing, and workplace protections for pregnant women.⁶ Several provinces have since gone further than the national law, removing all birth limits entirely and offering cash subsidies for second and third children.

U.S. Asylum Protection for Victims of Coercive Enforcement

For people who experienced the coercive side of China’s birth policies, U.S. immigration law provides a specific pathway. Under federal law, anyone who was forced to undergo an abortion or involuntary sterilization, or who was persecuted for refusing to submit to such procedures or for resisting a coercive population control program, is treated as having been persecuted on account of political opinion. The same protection extends to anyone with a well-founded fear of being subjected to such treatment in the future.⁷

This provision, added to the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1996, was written with China’s family planning enforcement in mind. Victims of coercive birth-control practices can qualify for refugee status or asylum in the United States without needing to prove they were targeted for a separate political belief. The forced procedure, or the resistance to it, is enough on its own. The most extreme enforcement practices were concentrated during the one-child era, but the protection remains available to anyone who can show past persecution or a credible fear of future coercion under any version of China’s population control system.⁷

1
Refworld. China: Law of 2001, Population and Family Planning Law
2
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. China: Information on Birth Registration for Children Born Out of Wedlock
3
NPC Observer. Recording and Review: Removing the Vestiges of the One-Child Policy
4
Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in New York. China to Register Unregistered Citizens
5
National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. Third-Child Policy Introduced
6
Chinese Government. Measures to Support Third-Child Policy
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1101 – Definitions