China Medical News

China's one child policy was introduced in the late 1970s to control the surging population by limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children, if the first born child was a girl. The policy was later relaxed to allow parents to have a second child if they were both the only children. It was further relaxed in 2013, after the Third Plenary Session of the 18^th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, allowing couples to have a second child if one of them was an only child.
The implementation of the one-child policy has resulted in an estimated reduction of approximately 400 million people in China, which successfully contained the problem of over-population. However, it has also been blamed for generating a number of social problems, especially the decrease in labor force and the aging population.
On October 29^th, after the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18^th CPC Central Committee, the CPC announced that China will be abandoning its decades-long one child policy, and that all couples can now have two children. This change of policy is intended to balance the population and address the challenge of an aging population.
After this announcement, Li Bin, the head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that the two-child policy will optimize the demographic structure, increase labor supply, ease pressure from the ageing population, and help improve the health of the economy. Li added that the Commission will increase services in maternal and child health as well as build more kindergartens. (Source: Xinhua)