China's One-Child Policy Shift; Imagine a World.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: China abolishes its controversial one-child policy. The rising power needs to grow its workforce. And the IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, joins me for an exclusive interview on that and how women are key to igniting global growth.</s>CHRISTINE LAGARDE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, IMF: It's a moral issue. It's an equality issue. It's a human right issue. But if none of that is convincing people, bottom line, it makes economic sense.</s>AMANPOUR (voice-over): Also ahead: a new political era in Poland. What a sharp swing to the right means for that country and for Europe. The former Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, joins us live.</s>AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. It is now legal to have a sibling in China. For the first time in four decades the Chinese government will allow couples to have more than one child but no more than two.</s>AMANPOUR (voice-over): It's widely seen as a reaction to a rapidly aging population and a slowing economy. And the problem isn't China's alone.</s>AMANPOUR: Europe is still struggling to recover from the crash nearly eight years ago. And the United States reported today that its economy grew only 1.5 percent, down from 4.3 percent the same quarter last year. So what is to be done? The answer may lie with women. In a landmark report, the International Monetary Fund says that as gender equality increases, so does GDP and income inequality goes down. The person leading the charge is, of course, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF. And she joined me for an exclusive interview from headquarters in Washington to discuss this.</s>AMANPOUR: Christine Lagarde, welcome back to our program.</s>LAGARDE: Thank you, Christiane.</s>AMANPOUR: There was an incredible announcement today that captured the world's attention. China has officially now said that people can have more than one child, a two-child policy. Apart from the social dynamic, what do you think it might mean for China's economy? Do you think it was done with an eye to spurring the economy?</s>LAGARDE: It's indeed a big news. And it's probably related to both family life issues but also the economy. It's clear that, with an aging population, with entitlement issues that are on the horizon, it is certainly, from a demographic point of view, a good move for China to head in that direction of a second child being legitimate and actually authorized, yes.</s>AMANPOUR: What do you think it can actually do? And is the time lag between when these second children become into the working force, is it actually going to make an impact that is useful soon?</s>LAGARDE: Well, the impact is, of course, a generation away because, for the actual impact on the workforce, will take time, will take the making, the raising and the education. But it becomes then part of the horizon. It becomes part of what people expect. And it changes the perspective. So I think the impact will begin to -- I don't know whether it will be visible. But it will have a short-term impact in people's expectations, in how they forecast their future and how they see themselves and their families going forward. And it will, of course, have a direct impact a few years down the road.</s>AMANPOUR: How do you assess China's economy right now today?</s>LAGARDE: We had a forecast of 6.8 percent for 2015, down to a bit less than that in 2016. So we see a very large economy which is undergoing massive transitions. One, it's going from being predominantly manufacturing to being much more into services, from being very export driven to being much more domestically focused, from being very control-and-command when it came to the --</s>LAGARDE: -- monetary policy and the currency variations. It's now moving into the direction of much more market-driven principles. So those transitions are huge. And it's now, I think, expected by the authorities that the growth rate is going to slowly moderate over the course of the next few years as a result of those transitions.</s>AMANPOUR: You, the IMF, has just come out with, I don't know, perhaps an unusual report, one that talks about gender equality and income inequality. Why have you put out that report? What is it saying about gender and inequality in the world today?</s>LAGARDE: As far as gender is concerned, we are -- this is now our third report that we published on the topic. And the first finding really is that reducing gender inequality is actually good for growth. And it's good for growth in countries like the United States, like Japan, like India, like Saudi Arabia. There are many instances where, actually, if the gender gap was closed, the GDP would increase by a significant amount, 5 percentage in the U.S., 27 percentage in India. That's finding number one. Finding number two, not only is it good for growth but it is good for reducing excessive inequality. So if you really close the inequality gap between men and women, you reduce, by the same token, the inequality in society. And that matters as well for growth because we really have now done some solid research that demonstrates that excessive inequality is not conducive to sustainable growth. So if you want to start attacking those issues of growth being too slow, fragile, uneven, not sustainable, you have to attack at the root of the issue. One of those roots is the gender inequality.</s>AMANPOUR: It's been a very difficult nut to crack, despite all the facts and figures that you put forth, not just now but in your previous reports and the common sense notion of this, it's still a difficult nut to crack. And there are all sorts of movements now to call for transparency in salaries, for instance. The British prime minister has called for all major companies to publish salaries and to, therefore, judge the disparity between men and women for equal jobs. We've also got a landmark achievement that's been announced today, the top FTSE companies now -- there are no more all male boards. They've achieved a target of 25 percent of women on boards and they want to extend that to 35 percent in the next five years. Is there a tipping point, a momentum, is it? Are people beginning to realize that actually it's all about the money, the dollars that will make the world grow faster and better if women are fully included?</s>LAGARDE: You know, whatever it takes. I'm tempted to borrow from Draghi. I think it's a moral issue. It's an equality issue. It's a human right issue. But if none of that is convincing people, bottom line, it makes economic sense. And if people are concerned about growth, are concerned about jobs, then it's a good idea to have transparency of salaries and to identify who is paying what to whom and what is the gap between compensation at equal jobs and equal qualifications. So good of Prime Minister Cameron to ask for that transparency. And as far as board compositions, I think it's excellent to actually have quotas, targets. And as soon as those quotas and targets are reached, to revisit and to increase. As I said, there is now empirical evidence of the fact that women contribute both in terms of growth, in terms of reducing excessive inequality and in terms of stability. We are seeing a lot of studies concerning the financial stability of companies, the success, which is clearly correlated to membership of women on the boards.</s>AMANPOUR: Do you think you are being paid the same salary as your male predecessors?</s>LAGARDE: Oh, I specifically ask for that. And in any job that I took after a boy, I always asked to be paid the same or more.</s>AMANPOUR: Yes, indeed. Excellent. That's a great example. Can I just move on to the COP 21 summit on the environment that's coming up? Do you call, like the World Bank, for a carbon tax?</s>LAGARDE: Well, the Paris summit is taking place in a few weeks now. The easiest way to deal with it, the less controversial, is a carbon tax, which can be budget neutral. Now we had controversies about it because some countries said, well, all well and done. But if we do that at home and nobody else does it, it's an issue. Granted. But even if a country, isolated as it could be does it, it will bring benefit because the indirect consequences of carbon and proliferation of carbon are costly for a particular country, irrespective of what the others do. Better to have a corrective approach. Better to have a minimum floor for the price of a ton of CO2 emission, for instance. And then we can talk about other emissions down the road. But there is a path. It's available. And it can be budget neutral. So I think that those are pretty important facts.</s>AMANPOUR: Christine Lagarde, thank you very much. Just as we say goodbye, your term is coming up as managing director. You've said you're open to a second term. Will you go for it?</s>LAGARDE: It's for the membership to decide. And if they think that I can continue to do a decent job, I would certainly be prepared to consider.</s>AMANPOUR: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.</s>AMANPOUR: And so while Christine Lagarde and others try to create an equal playing field for women, women in Iran can't even get near it.</s>AMANPOUR (voice-over): Since 2012, Iranian women have been forbidden to even enter stadiums where men's volleyball is played. Now Watch for Women, which is a campaign just launched by Human Rights Watch to end this ban, is pressuring volleyball's ruling body to ban Iran from hosting the world championship until women are allowed to watch the games.</s>AMANPOUR: And after a break, the hardliners in the West where anti- refugee fervor is pushing an entire continent to the Right, I speak to the former foreign minister of Poland about the seismic shift in Polish politics. That's next.