China allows couples to have three children

BEIJING: China will allow couples to have three children after a census showed its population is rapidly ageing, state media said Monday, further unwinding four decades of strict family planning controls in the world´s most populous nation.

In 2016 China relaxed its "one-child policy" -- one of the world´s strictest family planning regulations -- allowing couples to have two children as concerns mounted over an ageing workforce and economic stagnation.

But annual births have continued to plummet to a record low of 12 million in 2020, Beijing´s National Bureau of Statistics said this month, as the cost of living rises and women increasingly make their own family planning choices.

China´s fertility rate stands at 1.3 -- below the level needed to maintain a stable population, the figures revealed. The slump threatens a demographic crisis which has alarmed President Xi Jinping´s ruling Communist Party, risking a shortage of young workers to drive an economy experts say will have to support hundreds of millions of elderly by 2050.