one-child policy

China has greatly expanded a youth military training program and will provide compulsory training this year to 50 million children as young as 9 years of age, an exclusive USA Today investigation reveals.

China's one child policy, which has heavily skewed the ratio of young people to retirees, is placing an increasingly heavy burden on the next generation of workers, the BBC reports. In the State's "ideal" family, the only son will have to support six people in his adult years: his own parents, his mother's parents and his father's parents. As the traditional family structure begins to suffer, the number of people in the work force is decreasing. "It's very difficult," factory manager William Wang told the BBC, "and it's getting more and more difficult. Now there are a lot more factories and fewer workers because of the one-child policy. Costs are going up. It's not looking good."