Many of these changes mirror what has taken place in other developing countries, but Chen Yiyun, a professor at China's Academy of Social Sciences, points to one factor unique to China: its one-child policy, which is still widely observed in cities.
China's one child policy started in the 1980s curbed population growth, but Beijing now faces a rising tide of retiring workers.
As a child Lang Lang's father pushed him hard to succeed, projecting his own dreams onto his only son -- a product of China's One Child Policy.
The extraordinary emphasis placed on helping the exam candidates stems not just from traditional respect for education, but also from the fact that some 70% of those taking part are only children, born under China's one child policy.
Because very low fertility can become self-reinforcing, with children of one-child families wanting only one child themselves, China now probably faces a long period of ultra-low fertility, regardless of what happens to its one-child policy.
In recognition of this, while controversial, the Government of China adopted a one-child policy.
China's one-child policy, implemented in 1980, has already started to erode the labor supply.
"The trend is shifting, because in the 1970s China enacted the one-child policy, " Pao says.
And China's one-child policy was an entirely home-grown idea, although it had its foreign admirers.
The first wave of children born under China's one-child policy are now entering their 20s.
Babies, Americans have heard, are ripped callously out of wombs in pursuit of China's one-child policy.
The ratio of boys to girls in China since the one-child policy was instituted in the 1970s.
China's one-child policy would not count because it applies to ethnic Chinese unless it were brutally enforced on, say, Tibetans.
The dislocation of families has been exacerbated by China's one-child policy and a dramatic advance in life expectancy.
China has a one-child policy, but it is not based on religion and exceptions apply to minority ethnic groups.
And China's one-child policy can only be part of the problem, given that so many other countries are affected.
China's one-child policy means there is a shortage of women of child-bearing age.
Mr Chen was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2006 after exposing abuses in China's one-child policy.
China's one-child policy is a violation of rights and a demographic disaster, upsetting the balance between the sexes and between generations.
Is this Gore's first step toward his version of China's one-child policy?
China's one-child policy is the best known and most extreme of these.
By 2050, the employed community in the developing world, not including China with its one-child policy, is projected to increase by 50 percent.
Mr. Chen, a self-taught legal advocate who has been blind since childhood, was long a campaigner against forced abortions and sterilizations under China's one-child policy.
China's one-child policy has been in place more than three decades.
BBC: Arrests over China baby's death in one-child policy row
Mr Chen exposed how local authorities in Linyi, in Shandong, forced thousands of women to have abortions or be sterilised as part of China's one-child policy.
Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer, campaigned against forced abortions under China's one-child policy and was jailed for four years in 2006 for disrupting traffic and damaging property.
Known to many as China's one-child policy, the rules limit most urban couples to one child and allow two children for rural families if their firstborn is a girl.
Gendercide to borrow the title of a 1985 book by Mary Anne Warren is often seen as an unintended consequence of China's one-child policy, or as a product of poverty or ignorance.
Two groups are particularly eager to avoid the census takers: migrant workers, who usually lack permits to live in their new cities, and so-called "black children, " who were born in violation of China's one-child policy.
He ran afoul of local authorities around his home village of Dongshigu, near the city of Linyi in China's eastern Shandong province, for protesting forced abortions and sterilizations under the auspices of China's one-child policy.
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