The World - News from July 2, 1987

Despite China’s “one couple, one child” policy, 40% of the women in rural China have had three or more children since 1985, threatening efforts to curb population growth, an official newspaper reported. The China Daily said that increases in the number of second and third children in rural areas is jeopardizing China’s goal of limiting its population to 1.2 billion by the year 2000. China, the world’s most populous nation, had about 1.06 billion people at the end of 1986. The number of second-child births reached 6.9 million in 1986, up 1.37 million from 1985, the State Statistics Bureau reported. The number of births into families that already had at least two children increased 240,000, to 2.88 million in 1986.