China is planning to include new measures to encourage more births and address its rapidly ageing population as part of its new 2021-2025 “five-year plan”, state media reported on Monday, said Reuters.
China will offer extensive financial and policy support to encourage couples to have more children, the official China Daily cited experts as saying. Policies aimed at suppressing population growth must be replaced by a system designed to boost fertility, the official Legal Daily said, citing government experts.
“More inclusive population policies will be introduced to improve fertility, the quality of the workforce and the structure of the population,” said Yuan Xin, vice-president of the China Population Association.
Despite the relaxation of the one-child policy in 2016, the number of live births per 1,000 people fell to a record low of 10.48 last year, down from 10.94 in 2018. “To proactively tackle the ageing population, urgent measures are required to reform our country’s family planning policies and liberate fertility,” said Zheng Bingwen, an expert with the China Academy of Social Science.
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