China's Tibet relaxes one-child policy

Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region announced Thursday it has relaxed its family planning policy to allow couples to have a second child if either parent is an only child.

Phurbu Drolma, director with the health and family planning commission of Tibet, said at a press conference that the policy will be applied starting Thursday.

China's family planning policy already allows people from ethnic minority groups, such as Tibetans, to have a second baby. The relaxation of the birth policy mainly affects the Han population in the region.

Figures show that the population in Tibet rose from 2.72 million at the end of 2003 to 3.12 million by the end of 2013.

China's family planning policy, put in place in the late 1970s, is designed to curb population growth.

Tibet is the 30th provincial-level region to relax the one-child policy since the country's reform plan approved by the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November 2013. To date, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is the only provincial-level region in the Chinese mainland that has not yet made the change.