By ANTOANETA BECKER,
Street News Service
Adept at navigating through politically sensitive anniversaries, the Chinese government has one more socially volatile date marked in its calendar: this year's 30th anniversary of its one-child policy.
The backers of this policy set by the country's Communist leadership praise it as a unique experiment in social engineering, but detractors say it would ultimately undermine China's rise as a global power.
While intent on avoiding soul-searching public debates over the anniversary, the government has found it difficult to stem the flow of embarrassing revelations that have been coming one after the other in recent months.
First, there was the news that when first initiated, the one-child policy was clearly intended just for a period of 30 years, mainly to cope with the population pressures created by the baby boomers of the 1960s.
In December, leading intellectual and academic Hu Angang said that an open letter by Communist Party leaders documents the duration of the policy for only 30 years