CELEBRATING LONGEVITY: Dancers perform for senior citizens at a rest home in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on October 5 (WANG XIN)

According to a national plan on dealing with an aging society released in September, China's total population of senior citizens, people of 60 years age and older, will grow from 178 million in 2011 to 221 million in 2015 while its proportion against the total population will reach 16 percent.

"A welfare state must keep its commitments to its senior citizens. However, the provision of welfare will become unsustainable when the population of the elderly keeps growing and the working population keeps shrinking," Cai Yong, a visiting scholar of the School of Social Development and Public Policy of Fudan University, told Xinmin Evening News.

At the international conference commemorating the World Population Day, Li Bin, Minister of the NPFPC, said that over the next five years, new demographic challenges facing China include the enormous pressure the population exerts on resources and environment; higher labor costs as the working-age population begins to decline after reaching its peak; new challenges to social administration due to greater population mobility and the accelerated urbanization; and a rapidly aging population with a long-term skewed gender ratio.

Li said to deal with these challenges, China will continue to maintain a low birth rate, further develop its human resources, improve its social security system and services for the elderly and promote gender equality in society.

Policy at the crossroads

To achieve balanced population development in the long run, a growing number of population experts have suggested the government take measures to ensure the population maintains a moderate fertility rate.

There has been growing speculation that the government might relax the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1980 in cities as a temporary measure to curb surging population growth, and allow more couples to have a second child. Rural families in China can have a second child if their first is a girl.

Zeng Yi, Director of the Center for Healthy Aging and Development Studies of Peking University, said if the current birth control policy stayed unchanged, China's labor force would be reduced by 100 million per decade from 2030 when people aged 65 years and older will account for 28 percent of the total population.

Zeng proposed the one-child policy be gradually replaced by a more flexible two-child policy accompanied with limits of late childbirth and birth intervals of three to four years.

"On the premise of setting up proper late childbirth limits and proper length of birth intervals, the two-child policy can be made open to all families," said Zeng. He explained the two-child policy would greatly ease labor shortages, and late childbirth limits and prolonged birth intervals would prevent the total population from rebounding in the short term.

Mu Guangzong, a professor at the Institute of Population Research of Peking University, said the government should move to allow all families to have a second child in tune with the country's demographic transition. Analyzing risks harbored by families with only one child, Mu wrote that families would be devastated if the child died prematurely. The only child in a family also faces the unprecedented heavy burden of taking care of the elderly and is more prone to psychological problems during his/her growth.

In July, China's southern Guangdong Province officially asked for the Central Government's permission to loosen up the one-child policy in the province by allowing urban couples where either spouse is an only child to have a second child as a pilot program. Like most parts of China, Guangdong now only allows urban couples where both parents are single children to have a second child.

But there have been no signs the government has decided on any adjustments so far.

In an interview with the Economy & Nation Weekly, Li of the NPFPC said that China's basic condition as a developing country with a colossal population of more than 1.3 billion remains unchanged. "Population reproduction is far more complicated than material reproduction and should be tackled prudently. Loosening up the family planning policy is far from an easy key to all the problems," said Li.