China     

Family planning to loosen but 'will not be abandoned'

Agencies via Shanghai Daily, November 20, 2013

• China has no intention of abandoning family planning controls soon despite announcing it would ease the one-child policy, a government spokesman said yesterday, adding that the policy could be loosened further in the future.

  Keeping China's birth rates low remains a long-term priority for the country's development, National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman Mao Qun'an told foreign reporters during a briefing in Beijing.

  "Family planning work, not just in the past, but even now with the adjustment of the policy, family planning is a national policy for China," Mao said. "The control of population and keeping a low fertility rate is a long-term mission."

  The government announced last Friday that it would allow millions of families to have two children.

  China, with nearly 1.4 billion people, is the world's most populous country. The government says the policy of limiting families to one child, which covers 63 percent of the population, has prevented 400 million births since 1980.

  But the policy is increasingly seen as harmful to the economy.

  The easing of the family planning policy, announced as part of a package of reforms, would not take long and would be implemented by the provinces, Mao said.

  He did not give a time-frame. Provincial legislatures would have to first write the measures into law.

  Mao said China would further loosen family planning policy but signaled that the government would not abandon it in the near term.

  "The situation that you mentioned will be realized one day," Mao said when asked whether China could see a day when there would be no family planning restrictions.

  He said he could not say when and how the policy would change.

  "We can say that China, through its family planning policy, has controlled its rapid population growth and eased the pressures that population imposes on the natural environment ... But we are also very clear that, in order to obtain these achievements, the country's people have made a great sacrifice.

  "We do not deny that there is a contradiction between the state's implementation of the family planning policy and the desire of every individual and every family to give birth."

  Mao said China would take into account the economic, social and demographic situation before it made further adjustments.

  A growing number of scholars have urged the government to reform the one-child policy, introduced in the late 1970s to prevent the population spiraling out of control, but now regarded by many experts as outdated and harmful to the economy.

  Although it is known internationally as the one-child policy, China's rules governing family planning are more complicated. There are numerous exceptions.

  "As for the policy of family planning, (we) must adhere to it for a fairly long period of time," Mao said. "Because our country's demographic situation still needs it."

  The announcement to allow couples where one of the parents was an only child to have a second child was the most significant relaxation of the policy in more than 30 years.

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