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Xi: China's child policy change concerns nation's long-term development

Xinhua, November 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

China's plan to allow all couples to have two children will balance the population and support development, President Xi Jinping said in a statement released Tuesday.

The policy change, which will see the country abandon its decades-old one-child policy, was proposed at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held from Oct. 26 to 29.

The new policy could reduce the pressure of an aging population, increase labor supply and promote the balance of population development, according to the statement which explains a proposal for formulating the country's 13th Five-Year Plan at the meeting.

Currently, couples are allowed to have two children if one of them is an only child.

Despite this, until the end of August this year, only 1.69 million couples, or 15.4 percent of the more than 11 million eligible couples, had applied for having a second child, the statement said.

Over 15 percent of the population is 60 years old or above.

The working-age population has started to decrease and "the trend is continuing," the statement said. Endi