Do China’s Year of the Pig stamps signal an end to country’s family planning rules?
One of China Post’s two designs shows a happy family with two adult hogs and three piglets
The release this week of the design for China’s new zodiac stamps – for the Year of Pig – has led to speculation from a demographics expert and the public that the government might soon relax its family planning policies.
The China Post stamps have two designs, one featuring a hog running towards a better life, and the other showing a happy five-member pig family.
Although the designs were made public on Monday, after the stamps went to the printer, they will not be on sale until January 5, according to the China National Philatelic Corporation.
Some compared the new designs with old ones and saw a pattern, representing the evolution of China’s family planning policies.
Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical school and a long-time critic of China’s birth policy, said on Wednesday that in 1980, when the one-child policy was formulated, the stamp released that year showed a single monkey against a red background.
In 2016 – which was also the Year of the Monkey – when the policy was expanded to allow two children per household, the stamp design coincided with a mother monkey with two baby monkeys, one on each side.