BEIJING, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- China has passed its first law on population control strengthening the controversial one-child policy that the communist party says is responsible for slowing the unrestrained growth that made it the world's most populous nation with around 1.3 billion people today.
Legislation was adopted over the weekend at the 25th session of the standing committee of the National People's Congress singing into law the family planning policies that have been in use for 21 years.
"The law stipulates that the country encourages a couple to bear one child, and they can have a second child if their circumstances meet the provisions," the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The "provisions" of the new law are legally to be set by provincial authorities, but most stipulate that urban couples can have only one child while rural families are allowed a second child if their first child is a girl. Others allow for a second child if the first is disabled or if both parents came from one-child families. China's ethnic minorities are also allowed more than one child.
More than two decades of enforced family planning have yielded results, but horrific stories of forced abortions, infanticide and gender choosing have raised international outcry.
The Chinese government claims " about 300 million births have been avoided" in the decades since family planning became policy and that current population growth is at around 10 million per year.
Although the use of ultrasound is illegal to determine the sex of a fetus the practice is thought to be widespread, especially in rural areas where families prefer a male child who can go on to be a future breadwinner instead of marrying into another family.
China's latest census in November of last year showed a broad gender disparity in new births with 117 boys born for every 100 girls. International averages have shown around 106 boys for every 100 girls. China now has an estimated 653 million men and 612 women.
China released statistics from last year's census in March lauding the reduction of growth and crediting the one-child policy for its success. The National Statistics Bureau says that birth rates per woman had dropped from nearly 4 in 1970 to 1.8 today.
Critics were skeptical about the statistics given for the world's most populous nation given the difficulty of such a head count and the problems that arise during the census.
Many Chinese are reluctant to report their true number of children for fear of the fines involved and local government officials are thought to alter their numbers, as they are held responsible for enforcing family planning laws in their territories.
Other independent sources have consistently placed China's population much higher, some speculating that the total could have already reached 1.5 billion.
Chinese legislators have long called for the new law claiming that all of the problems that have been created by its family planning policies would be easier to deal with and that the excesses could be more easily addressed if there was a legal foundation for all sides to stand on.
