China population: birth control policies should be scrapped to retain economic edge over US, says central bank

China should immediately liberalise its birth policies or face a scenario in which it has a lower share of workers and higher burden of elderly care than the United States by 2050, China’s central bank has said.

In an unusually direct and frank tone, four researchers from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said the country should not interfere with people’s ability to have children or it will be too late to reverse the economic impact of a declining population. Since 2016, Chinese couples have been allowed to have two children.