There are many things to welcome in the Chinese Communist party’s decision to scrap its widely-detested one child policy, but an anticipated demographic pay-off isn’t one of them.

Last week’s terse statement from the party leadership, following a meeting to outline its next five-year plan, will allow all couples to have two children. That marks a further relaxation of the controversial policy after a November 2013 agreement to allow couples to have another baby provided one partner was an only child.

The government is now scrambling to try to undo the disastrous, unintended consequences of population control infrastructure that was first introduced to try to rein in the disastrous, unintended consequences of Chairman Mao’s ideas on demographics.