Births drop despite govt's child policy

Numbers would have been even worse without second-child rule, experts say

The number of births in China continued to fall last year, the third year since the implementation of a national policy to encourage couples to have two children, a population researcher affiliated to China's top health authority said.

The number of births for 2018 is estimated at between 15 and 16 million, but the figure is not surprising, Huang Kuangshi of the National Health Commission's China Population and Development Research Center told China Daily on Thursday.