China’s family planning policy, while limiting population growth, curbed the development of family-based enterprises, undermined traditional social structures, and suppressed the expansion of family businesses and political influence. Compared to South Korea’s chaebols and India’s family monopolies, its uniqueness is evident. Now that birth restrictions have been lifted, although challenges such as low birth rates are faced, new monopoly risks must also be guarded against, and a balance needs to be sought through multiple avenues.
I. Population Control and the Rise and Fall of Family-Style Development
The family planning policy, serving as a fundamental national policy in China for nearly forty years, has yielded significant direct results. Data shows that from 1978 to 2007, the natural population growth rate of China decreased from 12‰ to 5.2‰, resulting in over 400 million fewer births and reducing the proportion of the world’s population held by China from 22.2% to 20.1%. This sharp decline in population growth has profoundly reshaped the family structure of Chinese society. Taking family businesses as an example, after the implementation of the family planning policy, the number of children born to business owners decreased significantly: before the policy, 40.63% had three or more children, while after the policy, this figure plummeted to 18.46%, and the proportion of single-child births increased from 6.25% to 32.31%. This structural change directly led to a significant reduction in the range of internal successors available for family businesses, objectively inhibiting their ability to expand across generations.
Comparing the situations in South Korea and India, the differences are significant. Although South Korea has not implemented strict family planning policies, its birth rate has been persistently low (0.7 in 2023). However, chaebols maintain a firm grip on the national economy through means such as cross-shareholdings and inheritance tax avoidance. The combined revenue of the five major chaebols accounts for over 50% of South Korea’s GDP, with Samsung alone accounting for 20% of the national GDP. India presents another picture: 79% of economic output is contributed by family businesses, and six conglomerates control key areas such as telecommunications and steel. The profits of 20 top companies account for 80% of the total profits of all enterprises in the country. The core difference lies in that China’s family planning policy, by limiting family size, weakens the human resource foundation for the expansion of family businesses from the source. Due to different policy environments, both South Korea and India have allowed family influence to continuously penetrate the economic sphere.
Monopoly Restraint and Social Structure Transformation
The impact of the family planning policy on the economic sector is particularly evident in its suppression of monopolies. Due to reduced daughters, Chinese family businesses have struggled to form chaebol-style groups like those in Korea. Take South Korea as an example: chaebols maintain control through “circular investment,” with the Samsung family holding only 2% of the group’s shares but controlling everything through a complex equity structure. In China, family businesses after the implementation of family planning policies generally face the dilemma of “succession by offspring,” forcing them to introduce professional managers or undergo diversified equity reforms. Research by The Paper shows that the proportion of female successors in family businesses has increased from 13.85% to 34.21% after family planning, and their education levels have also significantly improved, with the percentage of bachelor’s degree or higher increasing from 43.75% to 98.46%. While this transformation hasn’t completely eliminated family control, it has significantly reduced the possibility of a single family monopolizing the market.
At the level of social structure, the family planning policy accelerated the disintegration of the traditional family core model. Household size in China decreased from 4.41 people per household in 1982 to 2.62 people per household in 2020; smaller families have weakened the functions of the family in terms of economic, educational, and social support. In contrast, India’s household size remains around 4 people, with the caste system deeply linked to family power, resulting in low social mobility. The transformation of China’s family structure has created space for individualistic development; by 2023, China had 240 million single adults, and the consumption market is seeing a trend of rising “individual economies.” This shift further diluted the influence of family economics.
Three, Decentralization of Power in the Political Sphere
The impact of the family planning policy on the political landscape is equally profound. Traditionally, familial forces have infiltrated grassroots politics through kinship and marriage ties. For example, in Xinyi County, Henan Province, 161 political families virtually controlled all government departments, with 20% of cadres at the deputy section level or above being “second-generation officials.” However, after the implementation of the family planning policy, the reduction in family size limited the expansion of familial networks. Research from Peking University shows that the number of children among officials decreased after the family planning policy, and the complexity of political family networks declined significantly. In addition, the policy promoted education普及 (popularization), increasing the average years of schooling from 5.2 in 1982 to 10.9 in 2023, which facilitated social mobility and weakened the monopoly of familial forces on political resources.
Comparing South Korea and India, the deep entanglement of Korean chaebols with politics (such as financial transactions between Samsung executives and the government) and the hereditary family politics under India’s caste system highlight the uniqueness of Chinese policies. China’s family planning policy has objectively reduced the possibility of power inheritance. Although familial phenomena still exist in county-level politics, the overall trend is a decentralization of the power structure. During the 2025 National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a CPPCC member proposed renaming the “Law on Population and Family Planning” to “Law on Population and Reproduction,” advocating for fully relaxing birth restrictions – a move that may further influence the evolution of future political ecology.
Challenges and Opportunities After Policy Adjustments
The implementation of the two-child policy in 2016 and the three-child policy in 2021 marked a significant shift in China’s birth policies. However, the effect has been limited: the fertility rate in 2022 was only 1.18, far below the replacement level (2.1). The relaxation of birth restrictions presents a dual impact on family businesses: on one hand, some entrepreneurs may enhance their family succession capabilities through having more children, such as Zong Fuli, the daughter of Quinghao from Zhejiang Wahaha Group, who is a single child taking over the business; on the other hand, high childcare costs (the average cost of raising a child to 18 in first-tier cities reaches 1 million yuan) and declining willingness among working women to have children limit family expansion.
Releasing restrictions on births could give rise to new monopolies in the economic sphere. The three-child policy is driving concentration within industries such as maternal and infant products, and childcare, with the early childhood care market expected to reach 162.13 billion yuan by 2025. Leading companies are integrating smaller firms through mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a CR5 (concentration ratio of the top 5) exceeding 55%. While this concentration may bring efficiency gains, it also warrants vigilance regarding new monopoly risks. The government needs to seek a balance between encouraging childbirth and preventing market concentration, for example, by strengthening regulation through antitrust laws, while providing childcare subsidies (such as the 3000 yuan monthly milk powder subsidy available to families with three children in Hangzhou) to reduce family burdens.
Releasing restrictions on birth rates may have subtle impacts on family power in the political sphere. While it will be difficult to restore traditional family political networks in the short term, over the long run, families with multiple children could potentially form new influence at the grassroots level. Therefore, improving cadre selection mechanisms and strengthening supervision (such as establishing a system of recusal for relatives of cadres) remains key to preventing power inheritance.
V. International Lessons and Future Prospects
The experiences of South Korea and India demonstrate that the rise and fall of family power is closely related to policy orientation. South Korea achieved economic takeoff by supporting conglomerates (chaebols), but at the cost of social equity being damaged; India, due to a lack of effective policies to curb family monopolies, has seen widening wealth inequality. China’s birth planning policy, while controlling population, objectively suppressed the expansion of family power, but also brought about issues such as accelerated aging and labor shortages.
Looking ahead, China needs to seek a new balance between population policy and socioeconomic development. On one hand, it should increase birth rates through supportive policies (such as extending maternity leave and building inclusive childcare facilities); on the other hand, it must strengthen antitrust enforcement to prevent family businesses from forming new monopolies through financial operations. In the political sphere, further progress is needed in grassroots democracy construction, improving oversight mechanisms, and ensuring transparency in power operation.
In short, the family planning policy, as a significant driver of social change in China, has an impact far beyond the population sphere. It reshaped family structures, economic models, and the political landscape, providing a path for China to avoid falling into a Korean-Indian style trap of familial monopolies. As policies adjust, how to balance efficiency with fairness, freedom with order within the new demographic context will be a long-term challenge facing China.