A couple gets the birth certificate for their second child on Feb 14, 2014. (Photo/Xinhua)
No timetable has been set to allow all couples in the country to have a second child, said National Health and Family Planning Commission on Wednesday.
The top family planning body refused to confirm a media report that claimed the government will probably introduce a two-child policy across the country as early as this year, while experts voiced support for the highly expected policy and said they expect it to be launched in 2016, Beijing Morning Post reported Thursday.
Financial media outlet China Business Network reported Wednesday that further relaxation of the family planning policy would come as early as this year if everything goes well. The report cited anonymous sources who participated in the policy survey as saying that relevant departments, including the National Health and Family Planning Commission, have begun assessing the policy and would push it ahead.
In a response to the report, the commission said Wednesday evening that currently there is no timetable on when to allow all couples to have a second child, and its stance on the matter is still consistent with the last press conference on July 10.
Yang Wenzhuang, director of the family planning grassroots guidance department under the commission, said on July 10 that the relaxation of the family planning policy in 2013, which allows couples with one spouse being an only child to have a second child, helped lay a solid foundation for future adjustments to the birth rules.
The number of couples who qualify is about 11 million, with nearly 70 percent of them born after 1980, Yang said.
Largely due to the policy relaxation, China had 16.8 million new births last year, 470,000 more than 2013, statistics from the National Health and Family Planning Commission show. Yang expected a bigger increase this year.
"That helps decision-makers make more precise demographic development forecasts and buys more time for socioeconomic and infrastructure preparation to welcome more babies," Yang said.
However, more adjustments are required to "address a major demographic challenge facing the nation: that problems in the population structure, particularly rapid aging, affect economic growth," he added.
"The new policy will be probably rolled out in next year, or the first year of the 13th Five-Year-Plan period," Lu Jiehua, professor of sociology at Peking University, told Beijing Morning Post Wednesday.
Lu said an overall two-child policy could help China slow its aging trend. He believed that the new policy should come as early as possible but it is not likely that the policy could be finalized and released within this year.
Wang Guangzhou, researcher at the Institute of Population and Labor Economics under the the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also voiced support to the further relaxation in the policy.
In 2012, Wang advised China to skip the transitional policy and pilot a program allowing a second child for all couples in some provinces.
By the end of last year, China had 915.8 million workforce-age people from 16 to 59, a decline of 3.71 million from the previous year and the third drop in a row.
More people nowadays prefer small families, said Lu. Other factors such as finances, housing, education and age are also involved in making birth plans.
Official statistics showed that only 1.07 million out of the 11 million eligible couples applied to have a second child by the end of 2014.
