In a huge policy move, China sets a three-child limit.

China said on Monday that all married couples will be allowed to have three children instead of the previous maximum of two, easing decades of population controls that have put the country in a demographic catastrophe.

According to state news agency Xinhua, the policy change was announced at a Politburo meeting led by Chinese President Xi Jinping with the goal of "maintaining national security and social stability" and "preserving our country's human resource resources."

Many people were taken aback by the announcement, which appeared to reflect concern among Chinese leaders about growth trends — a politically sensitive topic.

China's population growth has been the slowest since the 1950s, according to the results of a once-in-a-decade census released in May, with the population expected to reach 1.41 billion in 2020, up from 1.40 billion in 2019. Over the last ten years, the average annual population growth has been 0.53 percent.

Officials postponed the release of the statistics, which had been scheduled for April and sparked suspicion that China's population had begun to decline. According to experts, the world's most populous country's economic growth may be hampered by an aging population and a diminishing labor force.

As fresh data revealed the flaws in China's growth model, requests from demographers to central bank officials and entrepreneurs for family size limitations to be lifted have become more urgent.

However, China's leaders stopped short of repealing the very unpopular family-planning regime, which has been in existence since 1980 and is frequently enforced harshly, including forced abortions, sterilizations, and high fines.

According to studies, keeping the limitations in place is a good approach to keep control.

Yong Cai, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who analyzes China's birth laws, said, "It's the same statist and planning mentality."

The new three-child limitation “is unlikely to have big demographic effect,” he said. “China should have stopped using birth control completely.”

China's birthrates have been falling for four years in a row, reaching 12 million in 2020, the lowest level since 1961, when the country was recovering from a severe famine. China's fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, with 1.3 births per woman, well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1 births per woman required to sustain population stability. (Source: Washington Post)