China May Lift One-Child Rule Without Restrictions This Year

The Shanghai-based newspaper reported that a commission official seeking permission to extend a local pilot scheme in Shanxi province was told that soon all Chinese would be allowed to have two children.

It’s also bad for China’s bottom line: China’s working-age population fell by 3.71 million last year and its over-60 population will rapidly expand in the coming years.

If everything goes well, the full opening could be in place this year at the earliest, the source who preferred anonymity said. “Probably next year, or at the beginning of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan”.

Approximately 11 million couples were empowered to have a second child as that policy rolled out in 2014.

China Daily China Daily Information Corp/ReutersA girl runs in front of an advertising board in TaizhouThe decades-old policy restricting many Chinese families to a single child may soon change.

Twenty-nine provinces and municipalities have relaxed the one-child policy to allow couples to have a second baby if either parent is from a single-child family.

“Relaxing the current policy meets public expectations”, Mu Guangzong, a professor at Peking University’s Institute of Population Research, told the Global Times.

The introduction of a nationwide two-child policy could, to a certain extent, help elevate the low fertility rate in China.

The family planning policy is adjusting itself to better suit people’s needs and the development of the population, and hence it is becoming more humane. If their first child is a girl, Han-majority Chinese in rural areas are usually permitted two children.

Those surveyed cited mainly economic, crossing productive age difficulty in taking care of two children and limited resources as the main reasons for not having a second child.