China taking first steps to ease two-child policy

BEIJING: China appears poised to scrap its two-child policy, with a state-run newspaper citing a draft civil code that would overhaul decades of controversial family-planning rules.

China began enforcing a one-child policy in 1979 to slow population growth, with the limit raised to two in 2016 as the nation scrambled t o rejuvenate i t s greying population of some 1.4 billion.

The civil code would end a policy that has been enforced through fines and was notorious for cases of forced abortions and sterilisation.

The Procuratorate Daily said the draft omits any reference to “family planning” – the current policy that limits couples to only two children.

The report did not indicate whether the new policy would raise the limit or allow an unlimited number of children.

The draft, that is being discussed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress this week, is set to be completed by 2020.

Couples have been in no rush to start larger families since the policy was loosened, with 17.9 million babies born in 2016 – just 1.3 million more than in the previous year-anda-half of what was expected, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Births recorded last year declined to 17.2 million, well below the official forecast of more than 20 million.

“So they want us to have more babies and less divorces?” wrote one user on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.

“They created a generation of us ‘only child’. Let’s gather together and prepare to work into our twilight years,” another user wrote.

“Having children is good, it eases the government’s healthcare cost for the elderly.” – AFP