BEIJING — China’s top population official said the country’s one-child-per-couple family planning policy would not change for at least another decade. The announcement refutes speculation that officials were contemplating adjustments to compensate for mounting demographic pressures.
The official, Zhang Weiqing, minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said China would not make any major changes to the overall family planning policy until roughly a decade from now, when an anticipated surge in births is expected to end.
“The current family planning policy, formed as a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions,” Mr. Zhang said in a front-page interview published Monday in China Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper.
“So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth.”
Mr. Zhang said that 200 million people would enter childbearing age during the next decade and that prematurely abandoning the one-child policy could add unwanted volatility to the birthrate.
“Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now,” he said. “It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development.”
China, with more than 1.3 billion people, is the world’s most populous nation. For nearly three decades, it has enforced one of the world’s strictest family planning policies. Most urban couples are limited to a single child, while farmers are often allowed to have two. Critics say the policy is coercive and has led to numerous abuses, including forced abortions, which continue in some areas.
National family planning officials have tried to reduce the abuses, but local officials are still evaluated partly on how well they meet population goals. Supporters of the policy say it has kept population growth from reaching unsustainable levels. Government officials often say the policy has prevented roughly 400 million births, though some independent scholars and scientists cite a figure of around 250 million.
Today, China has a rapidly aging society that demographers warn could present significant problems. Already, the work force is defying the popular impression that the labor supply is endless. Factories have reported shortages of young workers in recent years. At the same time, the one-child policy is considered a contributing factor to a gender imbalance that has raised concerns that there may be too few women in the future.
Officials have tinkered with the policy over the years, but have resisted any sweeping changes. Speculation arose in recent weeks that some sort of deeper change might be coming. Last month, Zhao Baige, a vice minister in the national family planning commission, prompted a spate of news reports when she was quoted as saying that China was studying how it could move away from the one-child policy.
“We want incrementally to have this change,” Ms. Zhao said, according to Reuters. “I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers.”
A day later, a strong denial was issued in the state-run Beijing News under the headline, “News of abandoning the one-child policy is inconsistent with the facts.”
But the uncertainty quickly deepened. Wu Jianmin, spokesman for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the advisory body to the national legislature, suggested at a news conference that changes were being considered.
“The one-child policy was the only choice we had, given the conditions when we initiated the policy,” Mr. Wu said.
“When designing a policy,” he noted, “we need to take into consideration the reality. So as things develop, there might be some changes to the policy, and relevant departments are considering this.”
Mr. Zhang’s comments on Monday in China Daily seemed to put an end to any debate over timing. He told the newspaper that quickly abandoning the policy would create many new problems.
China Daily reported that the population was growing by up to 17 million people a year.