China to ease controversial one-child policy

China will relax its hugely controversial one-child policy, state media said Friday, in a major policy shift announced days after a meeting of the country’s top Communist Party leaders.

The change to China’s family-planning policy will let couples have two children if one of the parents is an only child, state news agency Xinhua reported, citing a “key decision” made by leaders at this week’s gathering, known as the Third Plenum.

The policy was brought in during the late 1970s to control China’s huge population, the world’s largest, but has at times been brutally enforced.

The law currently restricts most couples to one child, with one of the exceptions allowing a second if both parents are only children.

“The birth policy will be adjusted and improved step by step to promote ‘long-term balanced development of the population in China’,” Xinhua reported, citing the decision of top officials this week in Beijing.

Despite calls for relaxation of the family-planning law and rumours that it might be reformed, Chinese officials have repeatedly argued that the policy is still needed, claiming over-population threatens the country’s development.

At the same time census officials warned earlier this year that China’s working-age population had begun to shrink after three decades of astounding economic growth.