Active strategy can help solve population issue

As the home province of Confucius and Mencius, Shandong is steeped in Chinese culture. It is also, as some media outlets say, a leading province when it comes to the number of newborns.

Shandong's newborn population reached 1.77 million in 2016, up 42.7 percent year-on-year. And the number of couples who had a second child in 2016 added up to 1.12 million, up 69.9 percent year-on-year. In 2017, the birth rate in Shandong (excluding the migrant population) was among the highest in China, and the number of couples who had a second child accounted for 13 percent of the total in China.

However, despite the increase in the newborn population in Shandong in 2016 and 2017, some media reports say the number of new births in the province will decline in 2018 compared with 2017.