China's population to be 65% of India by 2050 due to low fertility: Expert

A Chinese expert has called for an end to China's controversial family planning policy, claiming the world's second largest economy's population will be only 65 per cent of India's by 2050 due to the one-child policy pursued by the government. China ended its decades-old one-child policy in 2016 and permitted couples to have two children as the population of elderly rose with declining numbers of young people. China had more than 230.8 million people aged 60 or above at the end of 2016, 16.7 per cent of the country's total population, the Ministry of Civil Affairs had said in August 2017. By international standards, a country or region is considered to be an "aging society" when the number of people aged 60 or above comprises at least 10 per cent of the total population. "China has entered a low fertility trap and that its aging population will impede economic development. China should make tremendous reforms to its social structure, and the first step is to end the policy," Yi Fuxian, a US-based researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told state-run Global Times.