Facing Low Birthrate and Population Cliff Crisis... China Lifts Birth Control and Implements 'Three-Child Policy'

Citizens commuting to work in Beijing, China [Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Seung-seop]China, which has maintained a 'one-child policy' for decades, has unveiled the 'three-child policy' card. This is an additional relaxation of the birth control policy following the 'two-child policy' introduced in 2016.

On the 31st, the Central Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China held a meeting chaired by Party General Secretary Xi Jinping to review the 'Decision on Improving Family Planning Policy and Promoting Long-term Balanced Population Development.'

The meeting included a policy allowing couples to have three children. This is a strategy to improve the population structure and actively respond to population aging in order to maintain the advantages of human resources.

Recently, there have been ongoing forecasts both inside and outside China that the population peak will soon be reached. Concerns are growing over a 'population cliff,' where rapid aging and low birth rates combine to cause a shortage of the working population.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the population growth rate over the past ten years was 0.53%, the lowest since the 1960s. Last year, the number of births was 12 million, down from 14.65 million the previous year, marking the lowest since 1961, when tens of millions died during the Great Leap Forward famine.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.