In the early 80's the Chinese government decided to take it's population problem into it's own hands by coming up with what is probably the harshist most extreme population control policy to date.
The one-child policy was introduced to ensure that China, which has historically been prone to floods and famine, could feed all its people.
The one-child policy or family-planing policy says that each couple living in the urban areas should have only one child, unless one or both parents are from an ethnic minority or they are both only children. In most rural areas, a couple may have a second child after a break of several years.
Resently this one-child policy has been made a law. The previous "one-child" policy was intended to address the Chinese government’s concern over its growing population. But the policy had often been viewed as somewhat of an anomaly—because although it increased access to reproductive health services, particularly contraception, it also took away individual freedom by stripping women right to control her own fertility.
