China must relax birth controls to defuse population time bomb, top think tank warns
Researchers say two-child policy is falling short and more action needed to balance rapidly greying society
China must take urgent action on birth controls to cope with the “grim” reality of its rapidly ageing society, a top government think tank has warned in one of the most prominent appeals yet for scrapping family planning restrictions.
In its annual “blue book” report on Chinese society issued on Friday, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said the country must consider either relaxing birth controls further or getting rid of them entirely.
China replaced its decades-old one-child policy two years ago, allowing all couples to have two children. But the report said that even that change was not enough to meet social needs.
“In the face of the rapid ageing of the population, studies must be conducted into how to refine the existing birth control system, or fully relax birth controls in a timely manner,” the report said.
If the ageing trend was not reversed and China’s population target could not be met, the country would struggle to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping’s goal for China to become a modern society by 2035, and a powerful modern nation by 2050, it said.
By last year, 16.8 per cent of China’s population was aged 60 years or above while the average life expectancy was 76.5 years. That’s up from 15.5 per cent of the population in 2014. Life expectancy was 74.8 years in 2010.