According to statistics from the Guangzhou Municipal Population and Family Planning Bureau, the fertility rate among Guangzhou inhabitants is 9.97‰. Only 0.86 percent of Guangzhou’s population bears two or more children. The fertility rate was 9.1‰ in 2001 with a natural population growth rate of 3.94‰. 92.54 percent women in their childbearing years have adopted family planning practices. Over the past two years, Guangzhou has recorded a fertility rate below 10‰. The city’s Yuexiu district and Liwan district have even seen negative growth for the past three years.

According to general population census standards, satisfactory population control - a low birth rate, low death rate and low population growth - has been achieved in Guangzhou. According to Duan, Director of Family Planning’s Technological Department in Guangzhou’s population bureau, there are relatively few unplanned births in the region and population control is no longer a prickly problem for the authorities. China has adopted family planning as one of its basic national policies with the aim of “controlling population growth, improving the population quality and optimizing the population structure”. The next step then is for Guangzhou to improve the population quality and to optimize population structure.

Men can play an important role in improving the quality of the population by taking particular precautions during the reproduction process. Clearly, the quality of the population will be hard to improve if “the seed of life” isn’t the best it can be. As a result, the family planning bureau of Guangzhou will showcase reproductive health techniques and provide information services especially for men, according Duan.

Many men still have relatively little understanding of reproductive health and catastrophic influences of harmful habits such as smoking, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and exposure to intoxicants can have on sperm production, which can result in offspring having physical abnormalities and mental amentia. Excessive sexual intercourse can also lead to a lower quality of sperm. Impregnation during these times may have negative influences on the health of newborn babies. Because of such possibilities, family planning departments at various levels are to provide more consultation services to men and offer improved medical care and better health services.

Experts hope that through a host of feature lectures, men will develop a better awareness and understanding of the importance of their role as “the engine of the reproduction project”. Men should know more about genetics and the best time to achieve pregnancy and how to protect pregnant women so as to improve the quality of the population.

(china.org.cn November 4, 2002)