Research On The Reform Process Of China's Family Planning Policy From The Perspective Of Policy Change Theory

As a country with a large population,China's birth policy can be described as extremely influential,and has attracted great attention.China's family planning policy has enforced the "one-child" as a basic state policy nationwide since the early 1980s,with far-reaching influence and great Chinese characteristics.The family planning policy effectively controlled the population and kept the fertility rate at a low level for a certain period and made a certain contribution.At the same time,violence in the implementation process has aroused the dissatisfaction of the masses;with the impact of multiculturalism,people's consciousness that reproductive rights are basic human rights is awakened.In addition,the problem of an aging population has become increasingly prominent,with a serious imbalance in the sex ratio of the population,the structure and major conflicts of demographic situation have changed.There was also a continuous decrease in the demographic dividend.During the period of over 30 years,real problems existed for a long time.China's policy of population fertility has undergone many gradual changes from the "one-child"policy to "comprehensive two-child" policy.Every time the transition triggered intense public discussion.In November 2013,at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,the leader proposed the basic state policy of adhering to family planning and implemented the policy that couple who was the only child could have two children.This new policy has already replaced he original"one-child" policy,the original policy monopoly collapsed.In order to promote balanced population development and respond to the aging of the population,in October 2015,the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee formally proposed adhering to the basic state policy of family planning,perfecting the population strategy,and fully implementing the two-child policy.This marked the official comprehensive implementation of the "two-child policy".On March 13,2018,the National Health and Family Planning Commission was no longer retained.The newly formed National Health and Sanitation Committee,as a sign of significant changes,means that the one-child family planning policy has exited the stage of history.This article which takes the family planning policy as the object of research,describes the blueprint for changes in population policies since the 1980s,and aims to study the period of family planning policy changes.How do we understand the process of changes in China's family planning policy in decades?How will the policy agenda of the universal two-child policy open?Focusing on the game process of different types of players or alliances in policy changes.Which factors or driving force have played a significant role in this policy change?How will the fertility policy be developed in the future?These are the questions that I will discuss in this article.This article will extract the subject,strategy and value concept of the policy process from the specific and fragmented historical facts,and then will discuss the relationship between variables as well as the trigger mechanism of this policy change.Policy change is an important part of the dynamic process of public policy.Adapting to changes in the time and adjusting in time is the only way for policy to serve the new situation.The theory of policy change is rich,which is grateful to provide standard paradigm for observing and describing the facts.This paper analyzes the applicability of various models,and finally tries to integrate Kingdon's Multiple Streams Theory,Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Theory and Policy Network Theory.I will synthesize existing theoretical framework and make the best use of them to construct a new better model so as to fully analyze and study the real cases of policy changes throughout the entire process.This paper attempts to use the Multiple Streams Theory to extract and conclude the mechanism of family planning from the perspective of policy process.Only when the three problem streams,political streams,and policy streams confluence will the policy window of "two children" be open.At the same time,I attempt to use the model of Advocacy Coalition and Network Policy to study the mechanism of family planning policy change and select powerful factors in explanation,then further probe into the applicability and localization of the two models in China.As Western mainstream theories,the two theories have strong explanatory power for the complicated policy change,so they will be appropriate for researching the changing period of fertility policy.The Advocacy Coalition Theory emphasizes on the different beliefs which divide people into different alliances in the subsystems.The Network Policy pays attention to the conflicts of interest among different participating groups.The two theories complement each other and both explain the family planning policy through the game of belief and interests.Ultimately through the policy learning,the policy image will change and achieve the equilibrium state.In addition,it was found that the experts played a significant role.Therefore,based on the analysis of the process,the paper tried to study the role experts play in policy changes.Then analyze the boundedness of experts in-depth,and put forward the optimal path.Finally,the article reviews the process of policy change from the one-child policy to the two-child policy and finds some drawbacks.Improving the external system of policies and giving full play to professional policy forums and policy entrepreneurs are also important.For government,the policy learning needs to be strengthen and responses to feedback need to speed up.I hope that this paper will enhance the practicality of the theory and also have a practical significance.