Historic move to streamline departments

Taking forward health and family planning policies

In this round of the Party and State institutions reform, the existing National Health and Family Planning Commission, aging work society and some health agencies under other ministries, will be transformed into the National Health Commission, indicating a historic shift in the main task of family planning, from population control to better serving the families to plan their future.

Considering the drastic changes in China’s demography, controlling the newborn population is not conducive to meeting the demands of social development, and the institutional reform will make sure the policies keep pace with the changing times.

As the institutional reform plan says, the new National Health Commission will bear the responsibility of “family planning management and service”, reflecting the functional transformation of family planning work. In the next stage, the authorities should focus on encouraging childbearing and optimizing the family planning services, which is a change the public has been expecting for a long time.

Moreover, the new National Health Commission has to address some problems arising out of the previous strict family planning policy, including those related to families losing their only child and the support for elderly care, in order to better manage family planning duties and provide improved services.

Mu Guangzong, a professor at the Population Research Institute of Peking University. This is an excerpt from his interview with China Daily’s Wang Yiqing.