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Zhuang Pinghui

Andrea Chen

China is studying further changes to its population control policy, Premier Li Keqiang said yesterday, amid intense speculation and debate over whether the country will completely throw out the one-child policy.
Renewed discussion got off to a start at the annual parliamentary sessions, when for the first time since 1988, the premier's annual government report did not mention the clause "the birth-control policy remains the fundamental state policy of China".
Instead, Li said in his report that "[the government will] push forward the reform of birth-control management and services".
Asked yesterday if the government was ready to allow all families to have a second child, Li said that the government was evaluating the partial relaxation of one-child policy introduced last year.
"We will also take into account the country's economic development and demographic changes in weighing the pros and cons [of further policy change]," Li said.
"But any adjustment and improvement of population policy would be conducted in accordance with legal procedures."
For all the latest news from China’s parliamentary sessions click here
The mainland recorded 16.87 million births last year, 470,000 more than in 2013, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
After the leadership endorsed an easing of the one-child rule in late 2013, some policymakers said the nation might have trouble absorbing the extra births. But only one million out of 11 million eligible couples applied to have a second child last year.
Ren Yuan, a demographer at Fudan University, said: "The 470,000 births is not significant given the base of more than 16 million births and … the increased number of births is also due in part to the larger number of fertile-age women born after 1985."
The mainland previously allowed parents who were both single children to have a second child. Last year the rule was relaxed so couples where only one parent was a single child were eligible to have two children.
Ren pointed out that the fertility rate was on a downward trend, and stood at 1.8, below the replacement-level fertility rate of 2.1.
Ren added there was no significant difference between a limited application of the two-child policy and making it universal, so couples should be offered the choice to have a second child.
Annual births were expected to be higher this year through to 2018, as the women born during the baby boom period between 1986 and 1990 reached the age of fertility, Ren said.
But the numbers would still be considerably lower than what was seen during that five-year window, and he predicted they would drop quickly after 2019, due to fewer fertile-age women, making it feasible to introduce a universal two-child policy.
According to a study by Zhai Zhenwu , a professor at Renmin University's School of Sociology and Population, an immediate transition to a blanket policy would sharply drive up the number of births every year to nearly 50 million, and raise the total fertility rate to about 4.5.
The change would not alter the number of elderly over the next three or four decades, but would change the ratio of older to younger people and slow the trend towards greying. If the policy was changed later, such as in 2017 or 2020, considerably fewer extra births would occur, he said.
Yuan Xin , a demographer at Nankai University in Tianjin, disagreed with Zhai over the impact of an immediate adoption of a universal two-child policy. It would not have an impact on the greying of the mainland but would affect the sex ratio and structure of the family.
Judging by the number of couples who applied last year to have a second child, the mainland could record a million extra births and the total population would probably continue to rise through to 2018 then decline because of fewer fertile-age women.
"It's up to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council to decide when to start the universal two-child policy. If the population continues to rise stably, it is possible to further loosen birth controls by 2020," Yuan said.
But Ren said all birth limitations should be abandoned so families could decide their size.
"The adjustment of birth control policy is not about increasing the labour supply or easing the greying of society because the impact is very small - China remains a country with the largest labour force and you can't stop the trend of an ageing society because of increased life expectancy," Ren said.


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China is studying further changes to its population control policy, Premier Li Keqiang said, amid intense speculation and debate over whether the country will completely throw out the one-child policy.
