<span style="color: #222222;">China's two-child policy has failed to make any impact on the country's low birth rate as the number of new-borns dropped by two million last year.<br />'' </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">China ended its decades-old one-child policy in 2016 and permitted couples to have two children as the population of elderly rose with declining numbers of young people.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The Ministry of Civil Affairs had said in August 2017 that China had more than 230.8 million people aged 60 or above at the end of 2016, which was 16.7 per cent of the country's total population.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">China reversed the one-child policy following the alarming growth of old age population.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Last August, official media reports said China's rapidly ageing population has now touched 241 million, accounting for one-fifth of over 1.4 billion people in the world's most populous country.</span><br />''