Beijing - China is preparing an effective relaxation of its draconian one-child policy in its first law on birth control which is due to be introduced in three years, officials said yesterday.
Introduced in the late 1970s to arrest China's burgeoning population growth, the one child policy is largely imposed in the larger cities where people dare not have more than one child due to sanctions.
But as millions of children born in 1978-79 have now reached child-bearing age, the planned law will be in effect a relaxation of the old policy.
Despite the success of the one child policy in the cities, China's population continues its breakneck growth, reaching 1.248 billion inhabitants at the end of last year.