This Day, That Year

Item from July 1, 1987, in China Daily: Beijing's streets continue to get more crowded as China tackles a worrying population explosion ... An upsurge of second births among China's rural families ... is jeopardizing the attempt to limit the population to within 1.2 billion by the year 2000 ... Since it started to effectively implement family planning policies early in the 1970s, China has achieved considerable success in reducing the natural population growth rate.

The family planning policy has prevented more than 400 million births nationwide since its implementation in the 1970s, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. The country's population reached 1.36 billion last year, with about 15 percent of people aged over 60, official statistics showed.

In 2012, China's working-age population fell for the first time - by 3.45 million - since the reform and opening-up policy was adopted in the late 1970s.