Family planning policy stays firm
Source: Xinhua/Shanghai Daily |
April 28, 2011, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
China will maintain the strict family planning policy it imposed a generation ago to keep the birth rate low and the economy growing, President Hu Jintao said in remarks before the release of census data.
China has the world's largest population and credits its family planning policy introduced in 1980 with preventing 400 million additional births.
The population is now more than 1.3 billion. Data on the first census in 10 years will be made public today.
Hu told top state leaders at a group study of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee on Tuesday that the policy - which limits most urban couples to one child and rural families to two - should be maintained and improved. But no birth rate target or other specific details were given.
Hu said China is a big developing country with a population of more than 1.3 billion, which is a fundamental reality that should be kept in mind when making decisions and taking actions.
There has been growing speculation among Chinese media, experts and the public about whether the government would relax the family planning policy soon, allowing more people to have two children.
The family planning policy has curbed China's population growth but brought new problems, such as an expanding elderly population that demographers say will be increasingly hard to support as the young labor force shrinks.
Hu said that social security and services for the elderly should be improved and he called on officials to formulate strategies to cope with the aging population.
The president also called for efforts in building China into a country strong in human resources.
The one-child policy is blamed by some for the country's skewed sex ratio. Some families with a strong preference for boys sometimes resort to aborting female fetuses. Demographers worry the imbalance will make it hard for men to find wives.
The male-female ratio at birth in China is about 119 males to 100 females, with the gap as high as 130 males for every 100 females in some provinces. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100.
Problems concerning the sex ratio should be addressed, and gender equity efforts enhanced, Hu said.
Government statistics showed China recorded 12.13 births per thousand people in 2009, comparable to birth rates in the United Kingdom, Australia and Denmark.
It is above the very low birth rates of around 7 or 8 per thousand found in countries such as Japan and Italy.
But it is well below the 23 births per thousand that the United Nations reports for India, which is expected to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2025.
China has the world's largest population and credits its family planning policy introduced in 1980 with preventing 400 million additional births.
The population is now more than 1.3 billion. Data on the first census in 10 years will be made public today.
Hu told top state leaders at a group study of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee on Tuesday that the policy - which limits most urban couples to one child and rural families to two - should be maintained and improved. But no birth rate target or other specific details were given.
Hu said China is a big developing country with a population of more than 1.3 billion, which is a fundamental reality that should be kept in mind when making decisions and taking actions.
There has been growing speculation among Chinese media, experts and the public about whether the government would relax the family planning policy soon, allowing more people to have two children.
The family planning policy has curbed China's population growth but brought new problems, such as an expanding elderly population that demographers say will be increasingly hard to support as the young labor force shrinks.
Hu said that social security and services for the elderly should be improved and he called on officials to formulate strategies to cope with the aging population.
The president also called for efforts in building China into a country strong in human resources.
The one-child policy is blamed by some for the country's skewed sex ratio. Some families with a strong preference for boys sometimes resort to aborting female fetuses. Demographers worry the imbalance will make it hard for men to find wives.
The male-female ratio at birth in China is about 119 males to 100 females, with the gap as high as 130 males for every 100 females in some provinces. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100.
Problems concerning the sex ratio should be addressed, and gender equity efforts enhanced, Hu said.
Government statistics showed China recorded 12.13 births per thousand people in 2009, comparable to birth rates in the United Kingdom, Australia and Denmark.
It is above the very low birth rates of around 7 or 8 per thousand found in countries such as Japan and Italy.
But it is well below the 23 births per thousand that the United Nations reports for India, which is expected to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2025.
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