Opinion

Most Chinese want to have second child, says survey

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An elderly man plays with his grandson in Beijing in 2011. By 2015, the mainland would move to a two-child policy, a newspaper has reported. Photo: EPA

Patrick Boehler has published on China and Southeast Asia in four languages for publications in the US, Europe and Asia.

Published: 3:06pm, 5 Aug 2013Updated: 3:54pm, 5 Aug 2013

More than half of mainland Chinese polled wanted to have a second child, according to an online survey released days after the nation's watchdogs for family planning indicated they might loosen their grip on the one-child policy.

Some 56 per cent of about 1,400 people surveyed said they would like to have a second child, said the poll by the Southern Metropolis Daily, released on Sunday. And 28 per cent said they would like to but could afford only one child; 12 per cent said they did not want any children.

The survey came only two days after the 21st Century Economic Herald, a leading business daily, said China would soon allow couples in which at least one partner is a single child to have two children. The report cited sources close to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, which regulates and enforces the one-child policy.

By 2015, the mainland would move to a two-child policy, the paper reported. Several media outlets followed up with similar reports.

Mao Qunan, a spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, later said the office was "studying" a relaxation of the policy. This would add about 9.5 million additional births every year, according to Bank of America analysts.

The one-child policy was last eased in 2011, when China's third largest province Henan, allowed two single-child parents to give birth to two children. The relaxation had already been extended to all other provinces in 2007.