Two million Chinese applied for second child last year

About two million Chinese couples had applied to have a second child last year before the government officially junked its over three-and-a-half decade-old controversial one-child policy, official media said on Thursday. The government first eased the restriction by allowing a second child for parents, if one of them is an only child.

At the end of 2015, Chinese lawmakers passed a historic legislation allowing all couples to have two children from January 1, 2016 ending its over three and half decades old policy that prevented over 400 million births in the country. The one-child policy, implemented from 1978, restricted China’s population to over 1.357 billion as per census in 2013.

China has a population of 1.3 billion, the largest of any country in the world. Despite massive publicity to the lifting of the one-child policy, the two child rule has evoked less enthusiasm among 100 million qualified couples who are eligible to have second child.