China formally allows more couples to have second child - Xinhua

Backgrounder: China's achievements in population development after 30 years of one-child policy

BEIJING, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature Saturday made a resolution to allow couples to have two children if either parent is an only child.

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) passed a resolution on adjusting and improving the family planning policy, through a vote at its bi-monthly session which closed here Saturday.

The resolution, equal to a legal document in China, entrusts provincial congresses and their standing committees to make the call about implementing the new policy.

"They should amend local family planning regulations, or issue a special act, in time, based on evaluation of local demographic situation and in line with the law on population and family planning as well as this resolution," the document said.p The Communist Party of China (CPC) decided to ease the only-child policy at the landmark third plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

Since family planning is written as an essential state strategy in the Constitution, it will require a resolution from the top legislature to adjust it.

ZHENGZHOU, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- After China announced its decision to loosen the one-child policy, heated discussion and controversy has broken out in the country's most populous province, Henan.

According to the decision approved at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee held from Nov. 9 to 12 in Beijing, the new policy will allow couples to have two children if one of them is an only child.Full story

China's "family planning policy" relieves pressures on resources, environment

BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- China's "family planning policy" restricts most urban couples to one child, and rural couples to two.

Since China introduced the family planning policy in the late 1970s, it’s estimated to have prevented adding 400 million people to the current population. That more than the entire population of theUnited States.Full story

Family planning policy to be improved

BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- China is to fine-tune its 30-year-old family planning policy, a spokesman for the nation's top population authority says.

But any step taken must serve to maintain a low birth rate while satisfying individual families' desire to have more children, the National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman said.Full story