Experts: Three-child policy a timely and effective step

China's newly announced universal three-child policy is expected to be a timely and effective step to arrest the decline in the nation's birthrate and address the challenge of a rapidly aging population, officials and demographers said.

They also called for stronger and more comprehensive support measures to encourage couples to have more children and reduce the burden of rearing children.

The Communist Party of China said during a key meeting on Monday that all couples will be allowed to have up to three children, replacing the universal second-child policy that took effect in early 2016. When the three-child policy will take effect has not yet been disclosed.

In a statement released on Monday, the National Health Commission said that implementing the three-child policy, as well as relevant support measures, will "maximize the proactive role of the population in economic and social development".

The new policy is also a sign of the country taking the initiative to "cope with the risk of a consistently decreasing fertility level and solve population problems in a comprehensive manner", the commission said.

Lu Jiehua, a population studies professor at Peking University, said, "The top factor behind easing family planning now is the low fertility rate and the low ratio of children and teenagers in the total population."

China's annual number of newborns has fallen for four consecutive years to an estimated 12 million in 2020. The country's total fertility rate－the average number of children born to each woman－stood at 1.3 last year, below the rate of 2.1 that would maintain a stable population, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The declining birthrate has also brought a sharp increase in the proportion of the population age 60 or above, rising from 10.3 percent to 18.7 percent in the past decade. The population of those 14 or younger dropped from about 23 percent to 18 percent during the same period.

"The trend of a rapidly aging population and the resulting shrinking workforce have sent us a reminder that if the three-child policy is not implemented in a timely manner, we might miss a favorable opportunity to complete the population restructuring," Lu said.

China began relaxing its decadeslong family planning policy for urban couples in 2002 and implemented a universal second-child policy in 2016.

The commission said policy shifts in recent years have resulted in more than 10 million babies born as a second child to a family. Newborns who are second children now account for about 50 percent of new births, up from 30 percent in 2013.

However, the shrinking number of women of fertility age as well as less willingness to have children have resulted in a drop in newborns in the past few years, it added.

Data released by the commission shows that the number of women ages 20 to 34－the prime age range for childbearing－had declined by more than 3.4 million annually, while more women are postponing getting married or giving birth, often in exchange for pursuing education or career advancement.

Meanwhile, a nationwide survey on population and family in 2019 found that Chinese people born in the 1990s planned to have 1.66 children on average－10 percent lower than the generation born in the previous decade, it said.

"After the second-child policy took effect, a significant number of families wanted to have a second child but feared the consequences of heavy economic burdens, lack of help in child-rearing and inability to balance family and work," the commission said.

Yuan Xin, vice-president of the China Population Association, said, "Our strategy should focus on rolling out a series of social, economic and cultural policies conducive to implementing the three-child policy."

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on Monday also stressed unifying policymaking in the areas of marriage, births, parenting and education, as well as guiding young adults on marriage and family values, among other support measures.

Zhang Benbo, a researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission, said in an interview with China Central Television that these measures are aimed precisely at lowering fertility and child-raising costs.

Projects in the short term include setting up public community centers in 150 cities and adding 500,000 public nursery care slots, Zhang said, adding that boosting the provision of quality education services and promoting equity is also a priority.

Yuan, of the China Population Association, has called for the accelerated building of nursery care infrastructure and improvement of related services, such as mobilizing sectors to participate in the industry, and setting up more public day care centers and kindergartens. "It is an extremely important aspect so that couples can afford to give birth and raise children," he said.

Yuan said that in addition to concrete benefits and incentives, helping the public transition from a mindset of preferring late marriage and childbearing and having fewer children to one of adopting the new three-child policy will be a significant task.

Huang Kuangshi, a researcher at the China Population and Development Research Center, said: "The new policy will cater to the demand of most couples to have more children, so the three-child policy is likely to remain for a relatively long time.

"More important, it has opened the gate for launching more fertility-friendly policies and measures to tackle the aging population in the future," Huang said.