Year of the Horse sees baby boom

Every 12 years, some Chinese couples are thrown into paroxysms of worry, fearing their child may be born in the Year of the Sheep, unauspicious in the eyes of superstitious old-timers.

In Chinese lunar calendar, years are grouped into a 12-year cycle, with each year assigned an animal symbol: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

With only three months to go, some expectant mothers already plan to opt for C-section to give birth before Feb. 19, 2015, the start of the Year of the Sheep.

According to China Central Television, there has been a baby boom in 2014, with many regions including southwestern Guizhou Province and eastern Shandong Province running short of birth certificates, important legal papers in China. Stocks will be replenished soon, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission on Tuesday.

Shanghai University sociologist Gu Jun believes the idea that people born in the Year of the Sheep are likely to suffer misfortunes is absurd and widely misunderstood. It originates in a folktale that people in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) opposed to the Empress Dowager Cixi insisted that her zodiac sign -- sheep -- would endanger the country.

A contrary tradition says that people born in the Year of the Sheep are simply a reflection of the animal's mild and gentle nature. However, nearly 52 percent of 2,000 people surveyed by people.com.cn in May said they knew couples who would avoid giving birth in the Year of the Sheep.

Bai Hua, director of obstetrics of the People's Hospital of Liaoning Province in northeast China, said about 30 percent more babies had been born this year than the same period last year.

The situation is the same in other parts of the country. Lanzhou, capital of northwestern Gansu Province, saw an increase of 50 percent in births between January and July, with obstetric wards packed with mothers-to-be, according to a report in the Lanzhou Morning Post, which predicted a peak at the end of the year.

Moreover, the number of couples applying to give birth to a second child since the one-child policy was relaxed, reached nearly 800,000 by the end of September, a family planning official said Tuesday.

The new policy, actually implemented from March in most localities, allowed couples to have a second offspring if either parent was an only child to address the issue of a shrinking labor force and aging population.The previous one-child policy had limited most couples to only one child in order to control population growth.

Gu believes many social problems could occur due to the baby boom, such as scarcity of medical resources at the time of birth and shortages of school and job vacancies when they come to schooling and employment age.