Chinese capital Beijing relaxed its one-child per couple birth control policy on Friday, allowing them to have a second offspring if either parent is an only child.
An amendment to Beijing's population and family planning regulations was approved at a meeting of the standing committee of the Beijing municipal people's congress following the recent Chinese government decision to relax the country's controversial one-child policy.
The Beijing city government will provide support by improving hospitals, nurseries and primary schools, and by protecting women's right to maternity leave, Wang Delin, vice chairman of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress said. China, the world's populous nation, introduced its one-child policy at the end of the 1970s to curb rapid population growth.
The policy meant that about one-third of China's 1.3 billion citizens cannot have a second child without incurring a fine for violating the policy. It is a significant change to family planning policy that has been in effect for more than three decades and part of a plan to raise the fertility rate and ease the financial burden of a rapidly ageing population, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Besides Beijing, Tianjin Municipality and the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Anhui have also changed the one-child per couple family policy. Provincial level governments in Guangxi, Hubei and Jiangsu have announced their intentions to relax the policy in March this year.
Other cities including Hunan, Qinghai and Shanghai, promised changes in the first half of this year.
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