Chinese authorities announce they will allow families to have up to three children. The decision to further ease the policy of restricting the birth rate was approved at a meeting of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, chaired by Xi Jinping, state news agency Xinhua reported..

The reason was the desire to slow down the aging of the population, reports BBC News.

China, which in the last century suffered from an exorbitant birth rate that led to massive poverty, now faces the same demographic problems that all developed countries.

" Further streamlining childbearing policies and implementing a policy that allows one couple to have three children will help improve the country's population structure, actively implement a strategy to respond to population aging and maintain China's human resource advantage, "

In 1979, three years after the death of Mao Zedong, the new rulers introduced the rigid rule " Violators faced huge penalties, job loss and, in many cases, forced abortion..

There was only one exception: in rural areas, couples were allowed to have a second child if the first was a girl..

In Chinese culture, there is a strong desire to have sons, not daughters.. When it became available to the Chinese to determine the sex of the unborn child using an ultrasound scan, the parents began to resort to abortion, having learned that they were expecting a girl.. 20 years later, this created a gender imbalance - a shortage of brides.

In 2013, the government allowed couples to have two children, where at least one of the spouses is the only child of their parents, in 2016 - to all families.

This led to a temporary spike in the birth rate, but then a new decline ensued..

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In early May, the results of the census carried out in China every 10 years were released.. It turned out that 12 million babies were born in the country last year against 18 million in 2016. This is the lowest rate since the 1960s..

Expectation that Beijing would soften its birth control policy following the census was widespread.