The government has set forth its five-year, ten-year and fifty-year targets for its population control and development program, according to a white paper released by the State Council last week.

By 2005, China aims to keep its population within 1.33 billion (excluding the population of the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan Province), and the figure will be controlled within 1.4 billion by 2010, and will peak at nearly 1.6 billion at the middle of next century.

At a conference on family planning, Zhang Weiqing, minister in charge of the State Family Planning Commission, said that law making in the field of population and family planning in China is still backward and the force of the existent laws and regulations is limited.

The functions, methods and organizations concerning China's population and family planning program, as well as the basic rights and duties of citizens in practicing family planning, are not fully guaranteed by a complete set of related laws and regulations, Zhang said.

He stressed that China should implement family planning according to laws developed in the coming five years, and ensure the status of family planning as a national policy so that the work of population and birth control can be pushed forward steadily in the long run.

China will further standardize the administrative functions of the government on birth control, the concrete measures adopted by communities, enterprises and non-governmental organizations to carry out the family planning program, and citizens' rights and duties in family planning, Zhang added.

(Xinhua 12/25/2000)