‘Two sessions’ 2022: calls for China’s family-planning restrictions to be fully abolished gather steam

China’s rapidly slowing population growth and dwindling fertility rate have sounded alarms for urgent measures to be laid out in annual policy plan

A raft of measures, policy changes and benefits are recommended by delegates to both of the ‘two sessions’ in the lead-up to the agenda-setting meetings

Reading Time:3 minutes

Mothers in China gave birth to a historic low 10.62 million babies last year, prompting warnings by demographers. Photo: TNS

Published: 4:30am, 4 Mar 2022Updated: 5:40am, 4 Mar 2022

China should lift all of its family-planning restrictions and step up pronatalist measures to boost the country’s precariously low birth rate, according to a number of representatives to the “two sessions” agenda-setting meetings that kick off on Friday.

With thousands of China’s political elites converging on Beijing to attend the annual parliamentary gatherings, a number of representatives have revealed their proposals to the central government to address the nation’s worsening demographic crisis.

Huang Xihuan, a delegate to the National People’s Congress and a city government official from Huizhou in Guangdong province, is among those advocating for China to completely lift its birth restrictions as soon as possible.

China’s rapidly slowing population growth has become a growing headache for policymakers, with alarms being sounded for urgent solutions.

Mothers in China gave birth to a historic low 10.62 million babies last year. The 11.5 per cent drop from 2020 contributed to an overall population increase of just 480,000 in the country of 1.4126 billion people.