Greying Shanghai urges couples to have second child

Jul 24, 2009, 11:07 GMT

   Beijing - Authorities in Shanghai, China's most economically developed city, are urging eligible couples to have a second child in a bid to curb the rapid ageing of the city's population, state media reported Friday.

   Family planning officials and volunteers will visit couples who were both only children to encourage them to take advantage of the exception under China's normal one-child policy, the China Daily newspaper and other media said.

   'We advocate eligible couples to have two kids because it can help reduce the proportion of the ageing people and alleviate a workforce shortage in the future,' it quoted Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.

   More than three million residents, or 22 per cent of Shanghai's population, are over 60 and the percentage is forecast to rise to 34 percent by 2020.

   'The rising number of ageing people will put pressure on the younger generation and society,' Xie said. 'We need to find ways to solve the problem, but it doesn't mean the country's family-planning policy will be reversed.'

   Experts believe that China's population of 1.3 billion would have swelled to about 1.7 billion without the one-child policy, which was introduced in the late 1970s.

   Governments in most areas of China now allow couples who both have no siblings to have two children, except for the central province of Henan, which is one of China's poorest and most overpopulated areas.

   However, the implementation of China's family-planning policy has been controversial, especially in rural areas.

   Some local officials have imposed heavy fines on people who violated the policy and in some areas have used compulsory abortions, sterilisation and other harsh measures to enforce the policy.

   About 11 per cent of the population, many of them from minority groups, are allowed to have two or more children, earlier reports said.