BEIJING - China's top population official has ruled out changing the country's one-child family planning policy for at least another decade, refuting suggestions that officials were contemplating adjustments to compensate for mounting demographic pressures.
The official, Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Population and Family Planning Commission, said China would not make any major changes to the overall family planning policy until an anticipated surge in births is expected to end, roughly a decade from now.
"The current family planning policy, formed as a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions," Zhang said in a front-page interview published yesterday in China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper.
"So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth."
Zhang said that 200 million people would enter childbearing age during the next decade and that prematurely abandoning the one-child policy could bring unwanted volatility in the birth rate:
"Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now. It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development."
With more than 1.3 billion people, China is the most populous nation. For nearly three decades, Chinese leaders have enforced one of the world's strictest family planning policies. Most urban families are limited to a single child, while farmers are often allowed to have two. Minority families can sometimes have two or more children. Critics say the policy is coercive and has led to numerous abuses such as forced abortions, which continue to occur in some areas.
National family planning officials have tried to reduce the abuses, but local officials are still evaluated partly on how well they meet population goals. Supporters of the policy say it has kept population growth from reaching unsustainable levels. Government officials often say the policy has prevented roughly 400 million births, though some independent scholars and scientists cite a figure of around 250 million.
Today, China has a rapidly aging society that demographers warn could present significant problems. Already, the work force is defying the popular impression that the labor supply is endless. Factories have reported shortages of young workers in recent years. At the same time, the one-child policy is considered a contributing factor to a gender imbalance that has raised concerns there will be too few women in the future.
Officials have tinkered with the policy over the years but have resisted any sweeping changes. However, speculation had arisen in recent weeks that some sort of deeper change might be coming. Earlier this month, Zhao Baige, a vice minister in the national family planning commission, sparked a spate of news reports when she was quoted saying that China was studying how it could move away from the one-child policy.
"We want incrementally to have this change," Zhao said to Reuters. "I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers."
A day later, a strong denial was issued in the state-run Beijing News under the headline, "News of abandoning the one-child policy is inconsistent with the facts." The article quoted an unnamed official at the family planning commission's publicity department saying: "This report is incorrect, its content is not verified."
