"China Reforms: One-child Policy to Be Relaxed"

From the BBC: China is to relax its policy of restricting most couples to having only a single child, state media say.  In future, families will be allowed to have one and a half children if one parent is an only child or has no more than half a sibling, the Xinhua news agency said...  The latest announcements are contained in a 22,000-word document released three days after the Third Plenum meeting of the Communist leadership in Beijing... The one-child policy would be "adjusted and improved step by step to promote 'long-term balanced development of the population in China'", Xinhua said.  China introduced its one-child policy at the end of the 1970s to curb rapid population growth. During the 1980s this was tightened and replaced with a "0.8-child policy" but this proved to be unworkable.  Reformers have argued for a "1.8-children policy" but hard liners argue that this is "too far too fast" and the results of the new "1.5-children policy" will be monitored carefully before further relaxations are considered.