A Chinese politician has called on Beijing to scrap the financial penalty imposed on couples who have more than two children to boost the country's birth rate.
Huang Xihua, a lawmaker from the southern province of Guangdong, told the Chinese parliament that the nation's family-planning policy should change to reflect the changing times.
Ms Huang's motion came after China's birth rate last year dropped to its lowest level.
For about 40 years, most Chinese couples were only allowed to have one child due to the nation's controversial birth-control law.
The central government altered the policy in 2016 to allow couples to have two children to tackle a quickly greying population. But many young people are unwilling to raise offspring because of mounting financial pressure.
Families who have more than two children now face hefty financial punishment. The fine varies from region to region, but it is usually two to six times the combined annual income of the mother and the father.
Ms Huang said that the act of penalising those couples went against China's demographic outlook.
In a proposal to the Chinese National People's Congress, which started on Friday, Ms Huang said the soaring cost in education, medication and housing had already dampened many young people's willingness to have children.
She stressed that the country should revoke the associated fines to prevent the country's working-age population from shrinking.
She also urged authorities to increase welfare provided to parents of young children and strengthen their protection over the labour rights of pregnant women.
China's birth rate stood at 10.48 per thousand last year, the lowest in 70 years and down from 10.94 per thousand in 2018. The number of babies born in 2019 dropped by about 580,000 to 14.65 million.
That marked the third consecutive year the overall number of Chinese births had dropped.
The National Bureau of Statistics said the population on the Chinese mainland crept past 1.4 billion for the first time, reaching 1.40005 billion at the end of 2019, with another overall gain of 4.67 million people.
The country is seeing a staggering gender gap, a direct consequence of the one-child policy.
The central government altered the policy in 2016 to allow couples to have two children to tackle a quickly greying population. But many young people are unwilling to raise offspring because of mounting financial pressure.
She stressed that the country should revoke the associated fines to prevent the country's working-age population from shrinking.
