China Promotes Family Planning Among Citizens

Maintaining a low birth rate will be very important for China in the coming decade, and therefore, China must promote a scientific concept of birth among citizens, said Zhang Weiqing, head of the State Family Planning Commission, Friday.

Although China's birth rate has dropped greatly, the low birth rate is not stable compared with developed countries, Zhang pointed out.

China should strengthen the popularization on knowledge in regards to population and family planning through various channels and media to help people to prepare in advance for having a small family after marriage, said Zhang.

He stressed whether people support and are satisfied with family planning should be the criterion for judging China's population control work.

Zhang made the remarks at an anniversary ceremony marking a decision on maintaining a low birth level issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council.

Thousands of Beijing residents participated in the activity. A scroll with more than 10,000 university students' signature, writing about the people's choice on birth decides world future, was dedicated to the State Family Planning Commission.

Over the past three decades of 20th century, China's population growth style has shifted from a high birth rate, low death rate, and high increase rate to low birth rate, low death rate and low increase rate, a historical change which took the developed countries more than 100 years to complete, said Zhang.

He added that China's population will peak at 1.6 billion and start to drop, while population quality will be steadily increased in the coming decades to form a favorable population environment for China's sustainable development.






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