Economist feels China's three child policy will not drastically increase birth rate

“I don’t think we can drastically raise the birth rate,” Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, said in an interview with The South China Morning Post.

The government’s move to allow families to have three children could lead to a short-term increase in births, but “we cannot expect the effect to continue for a long time,” he said.

“We’d better prepare for an ageing society,” said Yao, one of a group of economists who consulted President Xi Jinping and top economic official Liu He last year. “That is the destiny of East Asian societies.”

China relaxed its family planning policy, supporting couples who wish to have three children.

The policy shift was approved by President Xi Jinping in a politburo meeting, state media had said.

In 2016, China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy, replacing it with a two-child limit that has failed to lead to a sustained rise in births.

The government's latest population policy move, Xinhua had said, will come with "supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources".