China will continue to adhere to the family planning policy in
the long run, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China
(CPC) Central Committee said at a conference in Beijing
Thursday.
The conference, presided by General Secretary of the CPC Central
Committee Hu Jintao, described family planning as a key factor in
economic and social development.
The meeting urged continued research on population development
strategies, improvement of population quality based on a low
birthrate, better technological and service levels in family
planning and reining in a rising gender imbalance.
The focus of population and family planning efforts must shift
from purely controlling the numbers to stabilizing the low
birthrate, it said.
China would now have had 400 million more people if the policy
decreeing most couples to have only one child had not been put in
place, official statistics show.
The country's population officially reached 1.3 billion in
January last year.
Formulated in the early 1970s, the family planning policy
encourages late marriages and childbearing.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2006)