Couples in Shandong Province are allowed to have a second child if either the mother or father is an only child starting from July of this year, Qiu Bingyu, deputy chairman of the Shandong Provincial Health Department said.

The Shandong government has pulled out a plan and applied for filing with National Health and Family Planning Commission of China. If the draft is approved, it will be sent to the Standing Committee of Shandong Provincial People's Congress. The draft is expected to be approved before July.

Qiu said that among those couples who qualify for the policy, 70 percent want to have second child. It is estimated that Shandong will see a real baby boom by 2015.

If the policy is implemented in Shandong, the government will strengthen the introduction of anti-conception methods and let people know about the stress a second child might bring onto the ordinary families, in order to avoid this above mentioned baby boom.

Some experts have said this is only a transition and the next step will be to fully open up the new policy to everybody. However, Qiu said the Shandong government did yet not discuss this "fully open” scenario.

Sun Wei, Shandong deputy to the National People's Congress and director of the gynecological department at the second affiliated hospital of the Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said that due to limited resources, only a small number of beds is available to patients.

Qiu said that it would bring huge challenges to provincial and city level hospitals as most couples who qualify live in cities. According to the research, the hospital beds utilization rate is as high as 98 percent at these two level hospitals.

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