Beijing (HRNW) China has relaxed its family planning policy to allow couples to have a maximum of three children after a census showed its population is rapidly ageing, state media Xinhua reported Monday.
For almost 40 years, China enforced a controversial “one-child policy” — one of the strictest family planning regulations worldwide — which was lifted in 2016 due to widespread concerns over an aging workforce and economic stagnation.
“To actively respond to the ageing of the population … a couple can have three children,” Xinhua said, citing a Monday meeting of China’s elite Politburo leadership committee hosted by President Xi Jinping.
Despite government efforts to encourage childbirths, China’s annual births have continued to plummet to a record low of 12 million in 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month.
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