Calls for relaxed family planning policy rejected

China will maintain the current population control policy to stabilize the low birth rate, according to an official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

The commission's deputy director Zhao Baige made the statement Thursday at a symposium in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou with population control officials from 12 southern provinces, CRI reports.

The statement came after increasing social pressure for further relaxing the policy in light of a series of problems that have sprung up in the development of one-child families. China's family planning policy was established in 1979.

Dong Guang'an and Yin Zhiguo, both National People's Congress deputies of Henan Province, were among those who have made the proposal, despite the fact that Henan is expected to become China's first province to have a population of 100 million in the latter half of this year.

Yin Zhiguo supported his statement with the statistics that every post-80's couples now live under pressure to take care of four senior parents.

At this year's provincial NPC and CPPCC (advisory body) sessions, Dong and Yin, along with other deputies, urged the local government to enact a law that would give permission to couples where both husband and wife are from single-child families to have two children.

Their proposal was responded to by lots of local NPC deputies and CPPCC members as well as local citizens.

A local citizen Zhang who works as a teacher at a primary school in Kaifeng city in the province said her students always have trouble in understanding who are "uncle" and "auntie" since they have no such relatives. Meanwhile, those "only-kids" share common characteristics of being fragile and incapable in tackling setbacks.

So far, nearly 30 provinces in China have given permission to have a second child if both mother and father are the only children in their families. Henan, a province that takes up more than 7 percent of the country's total population, however, is not included in the list.