BEIJING, July 20. /TASS/. Chinese authorities have cancelled fees and other sanctions for the birth of a third child. According to the decision of China’s State Council published on Tuesday, by 2025 the government will create a full-fledged system of social policy on stimulating the birth rate.
"The decision was made to cancel fees for social support and other restrictive measures. The social support fees were canceled, the provisions on corresponding fines were reviewed and annulled," the document stated.
"By 2025, a policy of active measures to stimulate the birth rate will be developed overall," the decision noted.
According to the document, in the future, the procedures of registration, admissions to educational institutions and employment will no longer take into account the family situation of citizens and their possible violations of the restrictive birth rate policy.
The authorities intend to increase the quality and effectiveness of the measures of social support and the services on childbirth, upbringing and education as well as lower their costs for young families. By 2035, the country’s demographic policy should be modernized in order to "perfect the population’s demographic structure".
On May 31, 2021, the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party decided to allow families to have three children.
China's population policy
China has been pursuing a policy to restrict birth rates since the mid-1970s as families were allowed to have only one child with very few exceptions. If this rule was breached, parents faced big fines as well as other measures, including being fired from the civil service or expelled from China’s Communist Party. However, due to the severe imbalance between the large ageing population and the much smaller younger population since 2008-2009, the Chinese authorities allowed those couples, who were the only children of their parents, to have two children. On January 1, 2016, all Chinese families were allowed to have two children.
By the end of 2020, China’s population stood at 1.41 billion people. The share of citizens over the age of 60 reached 18.7%. In 2020, the country recorded 10.03 mln newborns, which is the lowest figure since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. According to the forecasts of Chinese demographers, if the existing trend is not curbed, by 2050, China will have about 487 mln residents over the age of 60. In other words, the elderly will make up 35% of the 1.4 bln population.