China will work harder to ensure its population does not exceed 1.4 billion before 2010, the minister of the State Family Planning Commission said Monday.

The government has been promoting the use of contraceptives through publicity and educational campaigns and by improving family-planning services, minister Zhang Weiqing told the ongoing fifth Asia-Pacific Conference on Population held in the Thai capital Bangkok.

The minister said the government has mapped out a Programme of Action for Population and Development in China, which aims to create a favorable population environment for the country's economic and social development.

The fundamental targets of the programme include maintaining steady economic growth, controlling population growth, enhancing people's quality of life, protecting natural resources, and boosting sustainable economic and social development.

However, the minister noted that the population problem could still be an obstacle to China's overall development.

He predicted that China's population would increase by an average of 10 million a year by 2010. The number would not fall until it reached a peak of 1.6 billion in the middle of the 21st century.

The country has a large population of working age, which is expected to peak at 900 million in the next few decades. This peak would impose pressure on economic development and the job market, with unemployment rates bound to rise.

Zhang also said China will expand its family-planning co-operation with international organizations on a wider scale and in a more transparent environment now that it is in the World Trade Organization, thus contributing more to the stability of the world's population.

He said that increased opportunities to keep in touch with international communities would greatly boost the country's exchanges and co-operation with global peers in the fields of reproductive health care, the export of contraceptives, and the prevention and cure of sexually transmitted diseases.

China's efforts in population control over the past few decades have been widely recognized by the international community, said Zhang.

Since the 1990s, China has co-operated with about 30 countries and set up a donor fund of more than US$200 million.

Family planning and reproductive health projects financed by the United Nations Population Fund have been implemented in more than 30 counties and cities throughout China, not only improving the working efficiency of the pilot regions but also helping the international community understand more about China's family-planning policy.

"Being a developing country with the largest population, the fertility of China has a direct bearing on the stability and prosperity of the world,'' said Zhang. "China will continue its family-planning efforts to keep population growth low and bring more benefits to its people.''

(China Daily December 18, 2002)