International experiences have shown that the further development of a country's society and economy depends to a large extent on whether the country can fully improve living standards of its population. Although China has currently achieved relative success in lowering and stabilizing its fertility rate, it also faces the challenges of fully improving its quality of life.

4. China should seize favorable conditions to bring about transition from merely lowering birth rates to increasing the living standards. China's population growth has achieved "low birth, death and natural growth rates" but the situation remains grave. The current low fertility rate is unstable and is very likely to rebound. Keeping low fertility rates has high costs. In recent years, the average natural population growth of China was approximately 8 million. In the years to come, population control will remain one of China's strategic goals for improving the quality of life.

It is imperative to change population and family planning policies in order to improve China's quality of life and overall population. Despite having such a large population China is far from being a country with strong human resources. With regard to education, the average education received by population above 25 years old in China is only 7.42 years, equivalent only to what US had achieved 100 years before. This will undoubtedly hinder China's social and economic development. To address this situation, the focus of China's population and family planning policy should be shifted from controlling the number of its population to improving its quality of life.

5. In order to promote the absolute welfare of Chinese nationals, the focus of China's population policy should be directed away from mere family planning to fully addressing the problems regarding living standards. This is a huge task, consisting of regulating birth control, compulsory education, medical care, social security and employment. Positive effects of population and family planning network and related government departments regarding lowering population numbers while raising quality of life should be analyzed objectively. If China can successfully transform its population policies and set up an effective rural public service system, there will be a decrease in the number of rural families seeking support for their old age by having more children. This will greatly reduce the difficulties confronting family planning. One of the major factors now affecting China's population quality is the lack of sound public service system. By prioritizing basic public services and adopting changes in population policy, China can improve its quality of life and optimize its population structure. China should focus its population policy away from mere family planning to comprehensively addressing the problems regarding population.

6. Public management should be directed away from a control-oriented mode to a service-centered one. One of the development trends of public management is a change from mere management toward interactive communication involving a growing number of participating entities. To cope with this trend while taking reality into consideration, China's population policy in the new phase should underline not only that "family planning is every farmer's duty", but also that "having child(ren) is the basic legitimate right of every farmer". Based on this, flexible measures such as basic public services can be employed to guarantee the overall updating of the national population quality as well as population security. In the recent past progress has been made; the work of population and family planning has become much human-centered. Financial awards have replaced financial penalties in the current population and family planning network. Special measures have been enacted to help sterile couples. Farmers have positively received these measures.

(China (Hainan) Institute for Reform and Development and translated by China Development Gateway December 20, 2007)