Besides a rising population, China will also undergo a peak season of working age population and ageing population.

    NSB figures show that China has entered a ten-year-long period of labor boom and will see the group expand to 930 million around 2015.

    "It will be very hard to create enough employment opportunities," said Yu Xuejun, head of the NPFPC's policy and law department.

    At the same time, China is increasingly advancing into an ageing society. It is estimated that the proportion of the elderly in China would rise from 7 percent now to 11.8 percent in 2020 and exceed 400 million by the middle of this century.

    "China will get old before it gets rich," warned Siri Tellier, United Nations Population Fund representative in China.

    A high gender imbalance may also bring about more severe challenges to China's policy makers and the general public as well.

    According to the country's fifth census conducted in 2000, the gender imbalance rate stands at 119.92 boys to 100 girls, compared with the normal rate of less of 106 boys to 100 girls.

    China's 1.3 billionth citizen is likely to encounter such problems. Besides being competitive to secure a job and a wife, he and his future spouse, the only child in each's family, will have to support not only their own parents, but their grandfathers and grandmothers.

    "We have so far no plan to change the family planning policy. But the Chinese government will take comprehensive measures to coordinate population growth with socioeconomic development," said a NPFPC official. Enditem