LETTER FROM CHINA JANUARY 22, 2014,

Letter from China: A Race Against Time for a Second Child

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

How Hwee Young/European Pressphoto AgencyAlthough a relaxation in the one-child policy has been announced, laws have yet to be changed in many localities. 

Updated, 9:27 a.m. |

At 39, Xiao Cai knows time is not on her side if she’s to fulfill her yearning and have a sibling for her 3-year-old son.

Her dreams are modest; she only wants two children.

Yet two months after the Chinese government announced a change to the one-child policy to permit some families a second child (the change will apply to couples where one partner is an only child), hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of women like Xiao Cai who are pushing the limit of their fertility find themselves in a bizarre and painful situation: Their dream of having two could be defeated at the finish line by the slow-turning wheels of state bureaucracy.

After decades of the one-child policy, many Chinese still feel that two children is a more normal number than one.

Xiao Cai, who asked to be identified only by her nickname to maintain her privacy, hopes deeply for a girl. A family of one girl and one boy — known in the West as a ‘‘millionaire’s family’’ — is an ideal here, too, like the two vases that make up the pair in traditional Chinese aesthetics.

She knows that her biological clock is ticking fast. But only in Zhejiang Province and, today, in Anhui Province, has the policy become law. In mid-January, the provincial People’s Congress in Zhejiang revised the law to permit qualifying couples to apply to have a second, saying the law ‘‘has been born,’’ according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. In Beijing, Liu Zhi, the city’s head of family planning, said officials ‘‘hope’’ to implement the change there on Mar. 1, The Beijing News reported.

‘‘The authorities have said they will change the law, but no one knows for sure when,’’ said Xiao Cai, a Beijinger and a health care worker. For now, she can only wait, as she has done since November.

‘‘I really want another baby,’’ she said. ‘‘But if we try now, what if I get pregnant and the law doesn’t change in time?’’

‘‘I’d like to just go ahead. But if it doesn’t happen soon and I have a child, it could have really severe consequences for us,’’ she said. ‘‘If I don’t do it now, I may never be able to. I really don’t know what to do.’’

The financial consequences of breaking the law, even in its dying days, would be heavy. She has done her math: the couple could be fined 300,000 renminbi, about $50,000. It would financially ruin them. Her husband left his ‘‘iron rice bowl’’ state job some years ago to work independently. Their income is adequate, but they’re not rich.

In a later text message, she wrote: ‘‘I’ve read in the newspapers that the whole country is researching this, when and how to bring it in. And I’ve read other stories that say the government is saying, don’t rush to have a second child, you must wait for the central government to announce it’s for real, or you will have problems getting all the papers you need.’’

So for now, she anxiously waits.

Xiao Cai is luckier than many of her friends who she said are battling infertility, a condition she believes is growing in China, based on anecdotal evidence. She already has her son. Yet she also has an older sister with whom she is extremely close and she cherishes that sibling love. What mostly drives her, she said, was the fear that her son would feel alone.

‘‘Only one child, isn’t it lonely for him? He’s so clingy. I think it would be really good for him to have a sibling,’’ she said.

So, as has been the case since 1979, when the one-child policy began, Chinese remain dependent on the will of the state for that most intimate of things: procreation. Only now, for many it’s a race against time.

The government expects between one million and two million additional births per year after the law takes effect countrywide, said Mao Qun’an, a spokesperson for the National Health and Family Planning Commission. In Beijing, officials expect between 30,000 and 50,000 more births per year, The Beijing News wrote.

Xiao Cai is hoping her dreamed-of daughter will be one of them — if the law changes before her fertility runs out.