Mainland to broaden two child policy in 2 years

All Chinese couples will be allowed to have a second child in two years, said a researcher who advises the government on birth control policies. “We will fully relax the policy” in two years after an experiment allowing some couples to have a second baby, Cai Fang, a vice director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government’s research arm, said in a brief interview Saturday after a speech in Beijing. “People wish to choose the number of children they want to have, and they should be given the choice, at least for two children.” Chinese President Xi Jinping relaxed China’s family-planning policy last year by allowing couples to have two children if either parent is an only child. The change failed to deliver a baby boom in the world’s most populous country – less than 3 percent of the 11 million Chinese couples eligible for another child applied for permission in the first six months, according to data from the National Health & Family Planning Commission.

Censors shut down Tencent website in Shaanxi

Censors in China have shut down a provincial website of Tencent Holdings Ltd., owned by the country’s third-richest man, according to a government notice. The website (xian.qq.com) will be closed for seven days for “lack of control on contents” and “permitting the spread of vicious and harmful information,” according to a notice by the Shaanxi Internet Information Office on the local government’s news portal. An official at the office confirmed the ban and declined to provide further details. Calls to Tencent Holdings head office in Shenzhen and its local website in Xi’an went unanswered yesterday. The website, known as Daqin, provides local news and information to 15 million users in the northern province of Shaanxi. The closure of Daqin was part of a campaign by the Shaanxi Internet Information Office in “cleaning up cyberspace and protecting legal rights of citizens,” targeting “terrorism,” “political rumors” as well as “fake journalists,” according to the notice. China has blocked foreign Internet companies including Google, Twitter and Facebook. Authorities have stepped up a crackdown on Internet content since Xi Jinping assumed office in 2012.