China’s government told reporters Monday that it will maintain its family planning regime and hold steadfast to the one-child policy because the country faces mounting resource pressures from the high demands of its 1.34 billion citizens.

Yet the announcement came just a day after leaders said they plan to strip power from the agency that oversees its one-child policy, a move some observers say signals a phase-out of the much-criticized population control.

What does it all mean? China Real Time talked to Wang Feng, a population expert and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, to break down the issues.

What’s driving the mixed messages from the government?

Saying that there is no change is a measure to save face and a recognition that they can’t announce all the change in one day. The National Population and Family Planning Commission was created for a single mandate of controlling population growth and now they no longer have that, those powers have been dissolved.

What the government is doing is a major political move and they cannot make or announce all the policy changes that go along with it in one day. They know they can’t dismantle everything all at once. It’s going to take some time.

It will not take long, however, for change to come. Leaders are aware of the changing demographics. The one-child policy has taken a toll on the labor force and has jeopardized the future economy.

The government said Sunday that family planning commission will merge with the Ministry of Health and that power to set population targets will shift from the family planning commission to China’s top economic planning body. Can you break down what this means for population control?

Leaders are signaling that they want movement toward a market economy, so they will be factoring in population policy into the overall economic planning.

My reading is that will mean that population control targets will be weaker and weaker over time. And we will see that the one-child policy era is over.

The way to interpret this is that the laws are still in effect, but the judges and the policemen have all been fired. Soon the laws will also change.

How will the government dismantle this policy that has been in effect now for more than three decades?

That’s the hard part. They’ve basically taken a drastic measure to abolish this apparatus, but it’s not clear who is going to clean up the mess.

Ideally, you’d want to have the people who have been implementing the one-child policy to also be the ones to help to phase it out.

Yet this is incredibly political. The family planning commission employs more than 500,000 people and it will be difficult to change this bureaucracy and what it has done for so many years. The people employed within the system are going to be redundant and many of them will likely leave, enabling a shifting of resources to the Ministry of Health. Those resources can be used to invest in reproductive health.

This is going to be an extremely difficult process.

What are the top challenges to changing the policy?

If the government decides to reverse its course, it’s not clear what kind of recourse people will expect and how the government will react.

In some situations, people have been fined and may try to seek compensation for the fines they’ve paid. There have also been physical atrocities that have come from this policy, with some women claiming that policy enforcement has led to their physical disabilities or injuries. How will the government address those claims? It’s still unknown.

中国政府周一对记者说，中国将继续实施计划生育政策，坚持独生子女政策，因为中国13.4亿人口的巨大需求给资源带来了日益沉重的压力。

Reuters在江苏淮安的一家医院里，亲属们抱着新生的婴儿。然而，上述声明发表的前一天，领导人们还在说，他们计划削弱负责计划生育政策的机构的权力。一些观察人士说，此举意味着中国将逐步废除饱受批评的人口控制政策。

这一切意味着什么？《华尔街日报》“中国实时报”栏目采访了清华-布鲁金斯公共政策研究中心(Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy)驻北京的主任、人口专家王丰，请他对这个问题做一下详细分析。

政府发出前后不一的讯息背后的原因是什么？

说政策不会变是为了挽回脸面，也是间接地承认他们不能在一天之内宣布包括配套政策在内的所有的变化。中国国家人口和计划生育委员会创立之初的使命只有一个，那就是控制人口增长，而如今人口计生委不再有这个权力，它的这个权力被解除了。

政府正在采取的是一项重要的政治举措，他们不能在一天内做出或宣布所有与之相关的政策变化。他们知道他们不能一下子打破所有的东西。这需要一定的时间。

不过，不用太长时间就会发生变化。对于不断变化的人口结构，领导人们心知肚明。计划生育政策大幅降低了劳动人口数量，对未来的经济构成了威胁。

政府周日说，人口计生委将与卫生部合并，制定人口目标的权力将从人口计生委转移到中国最高经济计划机构。您能详细分析一下这对人口控制意味着什么吗？

领导人释出信号，说希望朝着市场经济转变，所以在总体经济规划中他们将把人口政策考虑进来。

我的解读是，这将意味着人口控制目标将随着时间推移而逐渐减弱。我们将看到一胎政策时代的结束。

可以这样理解：法律仍然有效，但法官和警察都没有了。很快法律也将发生变化。

政府将如何废除这样一个已经实施了30多年的政策？

这正是困难所在。他们基本上是采取激烈的措施撤掉了相关机构，但不清楚谁将负责收拾留下的烂摊子。

理想情况是，人们希望实施计划生育政策的人也是参与废除计划生育政策的人。

然而，这个问题具有高度政治性。人口计生委雇佣的工作人员有50多万人，而且这个机构和它这么多年来做过的事也很难改变。计生系统内部雇佣的人员将成为冗员，其中很多人将可能离开，使资源转移到卫生部。这些资源可以被用来投资于生育健康方面。

这将是一个极为艰难的过程。

改变计划生育政策的最大挑战都有哪些？

如果政府决定调转方向，不清楚人们希望得到什么样的的追索权，以及政府将如何应对。

在有些情况下，人们曾被处以罚款，他们可能就缴纳的罚款索赔。计划生育政策还曾导致身体上的创伤，一些妇女称执法过程导致她们身体残疾或受伤。政府将如何应对这些索赔主张现在还不得而知。