China lifts 'one-child policy' after 30 years

On Thursday, the Chinese government announced an end to the decades-long "one-child policy," and will now allow all couples in the country to have two children.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the ruling Communist Party's central committee approved plans to allow all couples in China to have two children.

“China abandons one-child policy" Xinhua said through its official Twitter account.

The announcement was made at the close of a key Party meeting focused on financial reforms and maintaining growth between 2016 and 2020, amid concerns over the country's slowing economy.

China will "fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children, as an active response to an aging population," the party said in a statement broadcast by Xinhua.

It said the decision to remove restrictions that limited couples to a single child was made "to improve the balanced development of (China's) population."

There were no immediate details on the new policy or on a timeframe for implementation.

China introduced the one-child policy in the late 1970s in an attempt to rein in population growth and overhaul the economy by limiting most urban couples to one child, and most rural couples to two.

In recent years the policy has been gradually relaxed in light of three decades of economic growth and a rapidly aging population.

The easing of restrictions allowed the birth of a second child if the first child was a girl.

Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping considered the birth rate at the time, almost three children per woman, a drag on economic growth. Now, however, the policy is regarded as outdated and is blamed for shrinking China's labor pool.

For the first time in decades the working-age population fell in 2012, and China, the world's most populous nation, could be the first country in the world to get old before it gets rich.

Younger generations also feel less compelled to accept high levels of state involvement in their private lives.

At the end of 2013, Beijing allowed couples to have a second child if parents met certain conditions.

The new policy is a major liberalization of the country's family planning restrictions.