China has relaxed its family planning rules. China will allow each couple to have up to three children, official Xinhua reported, citing a Politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping.
The move is a bid to control the shrinking birthrate that threatens the country’s long-term economic prospect.
China's once-a-decade census, released this month, showed that 12 million babies were born in the last year, the lowest since 1961, during the Great Famine.
For decades, China had followed a one-child policy. Implemented in 1980, the goal of China's one-child policy was ensure that population growth did not outpace economic development. Later, by 2013, China began to ease its one-child policy and by 2016, couples were allowed to have two children.