Authorities in southwest China’s Sichuan province have announced the repeal of a ban on offspring registration for single people in a new birth incentive measure.
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The provincial Health Commission has explained that the rule applies to those who are registered as permanent residents in the region and will be effective from February 15 and for a period of five years, according to the newspaper ‘China Daily’.
The law is also modified to allow couples in Sichuan to have as many children as they want. The region has about 80 million inhabitants.
Pregnant women who register will also be able to apply for better medical care, whether or not they are married, thus “better protecting their rights”, according to a Sichuan spokesman, who said the aim is to encourage childbearing outside marriage.
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In 2015, the one-child policy imposed in 1979, which prohibited having more than one child, was officially ended, and since 2021, having up to three children has been authorized. The National Bureau of Statistics revealed a few days ago the first negative growth data in 60 years. China lost 850,000 inhabitants last year and now has 1.41 billion people.
