The statement, from China’s official Xinhua News Agency, didn’t offer a timetable or any other details. It came on the last day of a meeting of top party leaders known as the Fifth Plenum, where they chart out China's economic and social plan for the next five years.
The announcement followed a four-day Communist party summit in Beijing where China’s top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain the growth rate at a time of heightened concerns over the chinese economy.
Some celebrated the move as a positive step towards greater personal freedom in China. But human rights activists and critics said the loosening – which means the Communist party continues to control the size of Chinese families – did not go far enough.
Chinese citizens have long desired birth freedoms after leaders implemented the one-child policy in 1980. The move was intended to rein in explosive population growth and help raise living standards, though birth rates were already falling in the years before it went into effect.
The one-child policy led to myriad problems, including abortions and sterilization forced upon women by officials to meet population targets and tiny nuclear families that placed the burden of elderly care on single children. It also created a gender imbalance due to a historical preference for males. It left 150 million Chinese families, or one in three, with only one child, said Mr. Wang, of Fudan University.
China’s working-age population (those within ages 15 to 64) is already drastically shrinking and if not drastically planned would be of negative effect to the Nation.
The United Nations projects that China will lose 67 million workers from 2010 to 2030. The U.N also projects that the elderly population will soar, from 110 million in 2010 to 210 million in 2030, and will account for a quarter of the population by 2050.
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