China wants to boost its population growth. Don't laugh.

Shanghai is to urge eligible couples to have two children, as worries about the looming liability of an ageing population outweigh concerns about over-stretched resources. The Shanghai policy, reported by the China Daily, marks the first time in decades that Chinese officials have actively encouraged more procreation. China's famous "one child" policy is actually less rigorous than its name suggests, and allows urban parents to have two offspring if they are both only children. Rural couples are allowed a second child if their first is a girl. But since the late 1970s worries about developing an already highly populated country without straining scarce land, water and energy supplies has meant the government has always pushed to keep families as small as possible. This is still the official line in most of China, but Shanghai is now apparently rich enough to focus on a new concern - the burden of an ageing population on the generation born since the one child policy was unveiled. The US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies warned in April that by 2050 China will have more than 438 million people older than 60, with more than 100 million of them 80 and above. The country will have just 1.6 working-age adults to support every person aged 60 and above, compared with 7.7 in 1975. Read further: China needs bigger population I think that China does not want to acknowledge the fact that it has been sitting on a demographic time bomb for some time now because of the gender imbalance. China's rule of "one child" per family made the Chinese abort their female babies, as China along with countries, primarily in that part of the world, believes that a son is more valuable as traditionally sons look after their aged parents.