The number of students in the most populous Chinese province of Henan who will attend the national College Entrance Examination is 29,000 less than last year. This is the first year-on-year decline over a decade.
Zhao Xin, an official of the Higher Education Admission Office of Henan Province, attributed the Henan decline to the country’s family planning policy, which has been in effect for more than three decades and limits most couples to one child in urban areas and two in rural areas.
The policy has prevented an estimated 400 million births in China.
Zhao Xin said, ‘The lagging effect of the family-planning policy begins to show up in some parts of China.’ Zhao also said the decline was also an result of migration from Henan to other parts of the country.
China View reports the population in Henan exceeded 99 million by the end of last year and is expected to reach 100 million next year.
A record 10.5 million young Chinese, including 989,000 from Henan, participated in the national College Entrance Examination (CEE) last June.
The national figure for this year is not yet available. However, media reports showed the number of college candidates in Shanghai dropped by 16%, in Shandong, 9.1% and 7.8% in Fujian Province.
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