新闻纵贯线 Today updated 20:00 2018/01/26（在线收听）

2017出生人口比2016下降63万，低生育率老龄化社会车轮滚滚而来

Welcome to 'Today' - an hour of world news and analysis -- Today keeps you informed and inspired. I'm Suyi

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The birthrate in China fell last year despite the country easing its family planning policies and allowing all couples to have two children.The National Bureau of Statistics said there were 17.2 million births in the country last year, down from 17.9 million in 2016.China changed its long-standing one-child policy in 2015 in hopes of reversing the trend toward an aging population.

The number of births rose nearly 8 percent in 2016, with nearly half of the babies born to couples who already had a child.However, that increase appears to be one-off, with couple's decisions to not have a second child affected by the trend toward later marriage, the desire for smaller families and concerns about the high cost of raising children.

Despite government hopes, studies have predicted the loosening of the one-child policy would bring only a relatively small increase in population growth.

For more on this, CRI's Suyi joined in the studio by Zheng Zhenzhen, Professor of Population and Labor Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences;Xu Qinduo, political commentator；on the line we have Prof. Du Peng, Director of Information Center for Aging Studies with Renmin University；