Maximum, that is.
1 child policy from 1979 to 2015.
2 child policy from 2015 to 2021.
3 child policy since 2021.
The announcement came after the release of the results of the Seventh National Population Census, which showed that the number of births in mainland China in 2020 was only 12 million, the lowest number of births since 1960, and the further aging of the population, against which the policy was born.[5] This was the slowest population growth rate China experienced.[6]
Although the CCP government had high expectations for the new policy,[16] in a 2021 online poll conducted by the state media Xinhua on its Weibo account, using the hashtag #AreYouReady for the new three-child policy, about 29,000 out of 31,000 respondents stated they would “never consider it.”[15]
Because it would meant hat the CCP would have to retreat out of this particular part of life and give up a method of control and oppression, which a totalitarian party could never do.
It could also be seen as admitting they were wrong about the policy in the first place.
Hooray! I’m so glad, as a human, that were so comfortable with failure since it’s something we all do. And we know that we can admit when we fault and we can then do the work of righting the wrong instead of continuing going forever because we can’t be seen to have made a mistake. /s (fucking devastatingly so)