'Facilities needed'

A major hurdle that deters couples from having children is the serious shortage of affordable nursery facilities and kindergartens in China, forcing parents to send their infants to costly private facilities, said Lin, who is also an NPC deputy.

However, if the existing family planning policy is relaxed it is still unlikely to solve the numerical imbalance of China's rapidly aging population.

"Even if the birthrate increases, it cannot fundamentally alleviate the effects of the graying population," Yuan, from Nankai University, said.

"The number of newborns today can only offset the aging population problem a couple of decades later."

You Jun, vice-minister of human resources and social security, said at a news conference last month that by the end of 2019, more than 18 percent of the population on the Chinese mainland was age 60 or older.

This demographic is expected to continue expanding over the next five years. Meanwhile, the workforce has been quickly decreasing in recent years, and a further reduction of 35 million is expected over the next five years, You said.

Yuan said by the middle of the century about 500 million people in China will be 60 or older, placing the country among the top ranks of nations with elderly populations.

However, an aging society coupled with a shrinking workforce does not necessarily mean China will lose its competitiveness in economic development, Yuan said.

"China can improve the overall quality of the workforce through improved education and training to cope with the decreasing workforce," he said.

In addition, various measures should be taken to tackle a graying population, including boosting economic development, improving the labor supply and the social security and medical insurance systems, and developing elderly care services, he said.