"Family planning still needed"

That's the conclusion of a population researcher, as reported by China Daily:

Though some have argued it is time for the government to relax its family planning policy to offset the country's aging population, an expert in Shanghai said her research reveals that it is still too early to encourage people to have more than one child.

"The average age of females giving birth to a second child is getting older and the first generation of the only children born in the 1980s haven't reached their child-bearing peak yet," said Zhang Liang, secretary-general of the Family Research Center with the Shanghai Academy of Social Science.

There is still a strong desire to have a second child, so it is too early to relax the policy in case of a possible boom in birthrate, Zhang suggested.

The national policy, which restricts most urban couples to just one child, has reduced the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime from six babies to two since it was introduced in late 1970s, according to official figures.

But the latest research report by Zhang published on Sunday reveals the portion of women of child-bearing age who have a second child had risen from 26.1 percent in 2000 to 29.3 percent in 2009.

It seems that this article is intended as a response to those arguing that the one child policy is no longer needed since Chinese parents are making their own decisions to restrict family size even when the policy would allow them to have more children.