Signs that one-child policy might change

China is considering changes to its one-child policy, a former family planning official said.

Government advisory bodies are drafting proposals to counter the problems looming for the rapidly ageing population of the world's most populous nation.

Zhang Weiqing, the former head of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, was reported yesterday by China Daily as saying that the proposed changes would allow urban couples to have a second child, even if one of the parents was not an only child.

In terms of existing rules, urban couples are permitted a second child only if both parents were an only child.

Looser restrictions on rural couples has meant that many have had more than one child.

Population scholars have cited mounting demographic challenges in their calls for reform of the strict policy, introduced in 1979, to limit births in China, which now has 1.34billion people.

Zhang said the commission, and other population research institutes, had submitted policy recommendations to the government.

Zhang, who serves on China's congressional advisory body, said any changes, if adopted, would be introduced gradually.

"China's population policy has always taken into account demographic changes.

"But any fine-tuning to the policy should be gradual and should consider the situation in different areas," the newspaper quoted Zhang as saying.

The relaxed policy might be implemented first in "economically productive regions" and places that had closely followed existing regulations, the paper said.

President Hu Jintao dropped a standard reference to maintaining low birth rates in his report to the ruling Communist Party's five-yearly congress early this month.

Some experts saw the omission as evidence of an imminent change to the one-child policy.

Demographers have been warning that the policy has led to a rapidly "greying" population, which could hamper China's economic competitiveness.

Critics say it has also led to forced abortions and increased social tension stemming from an imbalance in the number of boys and girls.

Though forced abortions are illegal, officials have long been known to compel women to meet birth-rate targets.

This year, debate about the country's strict family planning rules intensified after a woman in the northwestern province of Shaanxi was forced by officials to have an abortion in her seventh month of pregnancy.

More and more experts expect the policy to change, partly because of the demographic imbalances it is causing. Some say the policy is no longer necessary anyway, because the cost of raising children in an increasingly prosperous society is already slowing the birth rate.