More than 1 million organizations with over 94 million members are now providing family planning services in China, sources with the Family Planning Association of China (FPAC) said in Beijing on Monday.

On Monday, the FPAC held its sixth national conference to confer prizes to 1,737 organizations and 3,048 excellent working staffs. A senior FPAC official said the prize-winning staff made a big contribution to encouraging people to have less children for a better-off family, thus maintaining a low growth rate for the nation's population.

The official pointed out that the Chinese government first advocated family planning in the mid-1950s when the country faced an upsurge in population. In the early 1970s, China adopted a national family planning strategy, asking each family to have only one child.

The latest statistics from the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) showed that China's population has been brought under control in the past 5 years, with the birth rate and natural growth rate dropping, respectively, from 14.03 to 12.29 per thousand and 7.58 to 5.87 per thousand.

However, if China had failed to implement the family planning policy, China's population would have been nearly 400 million more than the present figure, which, according to insiders, would have created enormous pressure and challenge for the national economy.

On Jan. 6, NPFPC minister Zhang Weiqing told the public that China will work to limit its mainland population to less than 1.37 billion by 2010. He was quoted as saying that China will face another upsurge of population growth in the coming five years because China's first single-child generation is about to enter reproductive age. This will make it all the more difficult to maintain a low birth level in the coming years.

Zhang also said China will continue to improve its population laws in an effort to work out laws and regulations to manage unbalanced birth sex ratios. Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in the world's most populous nation. About 40 million men may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020. Pinpointing this, local organizations were urged to make more efforts to publicize family planning policies to the public, especially rural residents.

The FPAC official said more specific measures will be taken to encourage families to have fewer children. People in the rural areas will be provided with higher-quality family planning services, and also with poverty-relief projects.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2006)