Shanghai, China's gleaming metropolis today relaxed its controversial one-child per couple family planning policy as part of efforts to meet the growing demographic challenges faced by the world's most populous nation.
According to an amendment passed by Shanghai's legislature, the government of China's largest metropolis will relax its birth control policy from March 1 and allow couples to have a second child if either parent is an only child.
Shanghai now faces a spate of demographic challenges, including a low birth rate, an aging population and an unbalanced population structure, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning said.
About 75,000 to 150,000 newborn babies are estimated to be added to Shanghai city's population in the next three to five years, officials in the eastern Chinese city said.
Currently about 370,000 families in Shanghai are eligible for the eased policy, they said.
Similar reasons were cited by the ruling Communist Party of China Central Committee when it decided to loosen the decades-old one-child policy last November, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
So far, five regions in China have relaxed its birth control policies. In addition to Shanghai, the regions of Beijing Municipality, Tianjin Municipality, Zhejiang Province, Jiangxi Province and Anhui Province have changed their laws.
China, which has a population of over 1.3 billion, will implement this new policy while adhering to the basic state policy of family planning, a decision approved by the CPC meeting chaired by Chinese President and CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping had said.
The birth policy will be adjusted and improved step by step to promote "long-term balanced development of the population in China," the policy had stated.
China's family planning policy was first introduced in the late 1970s to rein in the surging population by limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children, if the first child born was a girl.
The policy was later relaxed, with its current form stipulating that both parents must be only children if they are to have a second child.
