China Allows Up to Three Children... Official Legislation on Three-Child Policy Passed

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Seon-ae] China has legalized a plan allowing couples to have up to three children.

According to major Chinese state media on the 22nd, at the 30th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) held on the 20th, an amendment bill to the "Population and Family Planning Law" with this content was passed.

The amended law stipulates that couples can have three children, while the government adopts support measures related to finance, taxes, insurance, education, housing, and employment to reduce the burden of childbirth, child-rearing, and education on the people.

The amendment also includes provisions for medical and health institutions to provide education and health services related to healthy childbirth and child-rearing to people of childbearing age, and for the state to support the introduction of parental leave systems in certain regions.

Additionally, fines imposed on couples who have more children than allowed have been abolished. This has led to evaluations that the birth restriction itself has effectively become obsolete.

This was formally legislated less than three months after the three-child policy was first announced at the Politburo meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on May 31.

China introduced the "one family, one child policy" in 1978 to curb rapid population growth, but as the birth rate sharply declined recently, it fully implemented the "two-child policy" in 2016 and further relaxed restrictions to allow three children after five years.

This is interpreted as a response to the serious sense of crisis over labor force reduction and aging caused by low birth rates.

Chinese state media Global Times introduced experts' views stating, "The legalization of the three-child policy shows that China has officially shifted from a family planning policy that restricts births to a policy that encourages childbirth."

According to the population census results announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics in May, the number of newborns in China last year was 12 million, decreasing for the fourth consecutive year, and the total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her reproductive years) was found to be 1.3. Global Times reported that a total fertility rate of 1.3 is lower than the internationally recognized "highly sensitive warning line" of 1.5.

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