China lawmaker argues for starting three-child policy
BEIJING: Couples in China should be allowed to have a third child, a lawmaker has proposed, arguing it is the only way to stem a worrying slide in the birth rate despite the scrapping of the one-child policy two years ago.
The number of births fell sharply in 2017 after an increase in 2016, a year after the one-child policy was discontinued following nearly 40 years of strict implementation. Experts have said China is looking at a “gloomy demographic” situation in future, raising questions whether the current two-child policy was implemented too late.
It means a steady decline in the number of people in the working age and the government having to spend millions more to take care of the increasing number of elderly in society.
Zhu Lieyu, a member or deputy of the National People's Con- gress (NPC), China’s Parliament, which convenes on Monday, agrees with experts who have sounded the alarm.
“There is a big gap between the effect and expectation of the second-child policy, as it did not result in a population blowout, but a decline in China's birth rate,” Zhu, a lawyer from the southern province of Guangzhou, was quoted as saying by online news platform jiemian.com. Zhu argued a moderate rise in population will help China resolve the problem of an ageing society by upgrading its economy.
There were 630,000 fewer births in China in 2017 than the year before.