Birth control expected to be further relaxed amid demographic change
China's population is expected to reach 1.42 billion by 2020, according to a development plan released by the country's top health authority on Monday.
China is expected to take up 18 percent of the world's population by 2020. The latest version of the UN's world population prospects published in 2015 estimated the world population at around 7.8 billion in 2020.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that China had a population of about 1.38 billion by the end of 2016, with 17.86 million newborns and 9.77 million deaths in 2016, which means the country's net population should rise by 40 million in the next four years.
According to the plan released on the website of the National Health and Family Planning Commission on Monday, the annual natural population growth rate will be around 0.6 percent while China's gender ratio at birth is expected to be reduced to 112 boys for every 100 girls by 2020, which is still much higher than the internationally recommended ratio between 103 to 107 boys per 100 girls.
As for the male-to-female ratio among newborns, the number fell from 117.94 to 113.51 during the 12th Five Year Plan period (2011-15), said the plan.
China's family planning policy, introduced in the 1970s, limited most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children.
At the end of 2013, China's top legislature eased the one-child policy by allowing couples to have a second child if one of the parents was an only child. Since January 2016, the policy has been further relaxed by allowing all married couples to have two children.
Follow-up measures to support the shift are also listed in the plan, such as enhanced support for families that strictly abide by the family planning policy and preferential policies on education, social security and employment should be applied to couples who currently have only one child, and in the case of rural areas, two girls.
In addition, the commission also calls for more support for women returning to work after giving birth and encourages employers to support a balance between work and family life.
"It is very clear that the next step is to fully relax the policy and drop all the restrictions, but the shift must be made with prudence as China remains the most populous country in the world," said Song Jian, a professor specializing in demographics at the Renmin University of China.
According to a research project led by Song after China relaxed the family planning policy in 2016, Chinese couples would ideally like to have one boy and a girl.
However, apart from official estimates, individual views on marriage and childbearing, as well as their actual reproductive behavior, remain a changing and complex issue, Song said.
Reaching growth target
The changes in population policies are also related to the demographic structure and future economic growth blueprint.
China's GDP in 2016 hit 74.41 trillion yuan ($10.83 trillion) and the 13th Five-Year Plan expects the number to reach 90 trillion yuan, with the bottom line for growth rate set at 6.5 percent.
At an economic forum held in November 2015 in Malaysia, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the GDP per capital of China can reach $12,000 in 2020, as long as the country maintains a 6.5 percent growth, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.
But some scholars and citizens doubt if the target, which is close to the living standards of developed countries, is achievable given the demographic challenges of labor shortage and aging society.
The number of people in China of working age is expected to shrink slightly to 958 million by 2030, and the country will have 240 million people aged 60 or above by the year of 2020, making up 17 percent of the population, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Facing the challenges, China should further carry measures to optimize the domestic demographic structure, as well as utilize international resources in the context of globalization, experts said.
