Chinese fertility was falling for decades before the one-child policy took effect in 1979.
"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.
China has a one-child policy, but it is not based on religion and exceptions apply to minority ethnic groups.
By 2050, the employed community in the developing world, not including China with its one-child policy, is projected to increase by 50 percent.
The last baby boomers of the late 1970s and early 1980s--before the one-child policy took full effect--are having children now, creating another Chinese baby boom.
China's one-child policy has been in place more than three decades.
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They knew that China's fertility rate, or the average number of children born to each woman, was in decline even before the one-child policy began in 1980.
Taking care of parents is part of Chinese tradition but the country's one-child policy and the trend of people moving away for work have put strains on the traditional family structure.
One of the academics, Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Centre for Public Policy, argues that China's demographic pattern had already changed dramatically by the time the one-child policy began in 1980.
But while it has so far relied on a low-cost manufacturing strategy for its success, it is shifting gears as a restless work force and the results of its one-child policy threaten its manufacturing advantage.
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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.
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.
Though the single-child policy is more successful in the cities, one can find similar patterns in rural areas.
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