China has no plan to fully stop its one-child policy in May as rumors have speculated, according to Song Shuli, a spokesman for the nation's top population authority.

Song Shuli, spokesman for China's National Health and Family Planning Commission. (Photo/Screenshot from CNS)

Song said China's huge population would continue to place pressure on resources, the environment, and economic and social development for the long term.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission would not allow all couples to have two children, and the goal was to promote balanced development after policy evaluations, Song added.

But some scholars were urging for a complete end to the one-child policy and said some concerns had been proven baseless.

In 2014, China eased its one-child policy to allow couples to have a second child if either parent is an only child. It was predicted then that hospitals would see an explosive growth in the number of pregnant women, and that competition for educational resources would also rise.

But from March 2014 to the end of 2014, only one out of the 11 million couples that meet the criteria had applied to have a second child.

Shi Renbing, the director of the Institute of Population Research at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said the fine-tuning of population policy didn't cause the problems, and actually revealed a declining willingness among Chinese couples to have more children.

Shi said it was time for policymakers to fully allow second children.

A research report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said that China's total fertility rate (the average number of children born to each woman) was among the lowest in the world, at only 1.4, well below the replacement level of 2.1. The report called for a quicker transition to a more relaxed policy regarding second children.

Zhang Dongwei, the director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics of the CASS, said that it was hard for the fertility rate to bounce back once it drops. That's due to reasons like economic growth, and there is a real worry that phasing out the one-child policy would not guarantee a population increase.

The government estimated that the one-child policy had prevented 400 million potential births over the past four decades. The recent policy adjustment aimed to offset the effects of an aging population.

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