China will allow couples to have three children, ignoring calls to scrap its historic family policies entirely in the face of a looming demographic crisis after Beijing reported the population grew at its slowest rate in decades.
Xinhua, China’s state media agency, said the Communist party’s politburo, comprised of its 25 most senior officials, had concluded that the new “three-child policy” was intended to “actively address the ageing population, and maintain China’s natural advantage in human resources”.
Experts, the public and even China’s central bank have called for the government to abolish birth limits entirely after the census published this month showed the population added 5.4 per cent from 1.34bn in 2010 — the lowest rate of increase between censuses since the People’s Republic of China began collecting data in 1953 — and births declined sharply.