China's two-child policy 'to add 3 million Additional babies a year

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Around three million extra babies will be born each year after Beijing abolished its hugely controversial "one child" policy to allow all couples to have two offspring, officials said on Tuesday.

Decades of strict, sometimes brutal enforcement left the world's largest population - 1.37 billion people - ageing rapidly and with a shrinking workforce that has heightened the challenges of slowing economic growth.

The rule change, announced after a key Communist Party meeting last month, will allow 90 million more Chinese women a second child, said Wang Pei'an, a vice minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

But half of them are aged between 40 and 49, he added, limiting their desire or ability to bear children.

Some might be "reluctant" to have more children, he said, while some might be "unable to give birth" even if they wanted to.