Society

Policy Encourages Births

A National Health and Family Planning Commission official has disclosed at a press conference the notable results of changes to China’s family planning policy.

After the country amended its onechild policy in late 2013 to allow couples where either husband or wife are single offspring to have two children, the 2014 birth rate edged up 0.29 per thousand over that of the previous year, adding 470,000 to the population.

Since the recently initiated two-child policy, different government departments have conducted extensive studies on its demographic impact and arrived at similar conclusions. According to their estimates, there will now be about 17 million births annually, and this figure will exceed 20 million in certain years. More than three million of the annual population increase is attributable to the policy’s recalibration. At this rate, China’s working population – those aged above 15 – will increase 30 million by 2050.

Steady Rise in R&D Funding

The National Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Finance have jointly released the Statistical Communiqué on National Expenditures on Science and Technology in 2014. It confirms that the country’s R&D investment intensity (ratio of R&D spending to GDP) climbed 0.04 percentage points last year to 2.05 percent.

R&D expenditure in 2014 totaled RMB 1.30156 trillion – up 9.5 percent, or RMB 116.9 billion, year-on-year. Of this, RMB 61.35 billion was allocated to basic research, a 10.6 percent increase; RMB 139.85 billion to applied research, a 10.2 percent increase; and RMB 1.10036 trillion to experimental development, a 9.8 percent increase.

Calculated according to different executive bodies, enterprises’ expenditure accounted for 77.3 percent, research institutions subordinated to the government for 14.8 percent, and that by universities for 6.9 percent of total R&D expenditure. The corporate contribution to growth in national expenditure on science and technology was 84.2 percent, a 4.5 percentage point increase over the previous year. China is the world’s second largest R&D investor, according to senior statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics Guan Xiaojing. Though the funding intensity in China still lags behind the three to four percent of developed countries, the rate is nevertheless steadily improving.

New Regulation for Light Civilian Drones

The Civil Aviation Administration of China has drafted a provisional regulation on the operation of light-duty civilian drones, Ke Yubao, executive secretary-general of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of China, recently announced. The regulation will help to eliminate statutory loopholes in the management of unmanned aircraft, so setting clear rules on which flights are legal and adding to the convenience of drone operators, according to Ke.

Under the new regulation, drones weighing less than 25 kilograms which fly at an altitude lower than 150 meters will be exempt from airworthiness certification but will still need to be registered with the civil aviation authority, Ke said. Those weighing 25 kg to 150 kg will need airworthiness certification before being allowed to operate.

An industry report the association recently released estimates that almost 90 percent of civilian drones on the Chinese mainland are lighter than 25 kg and have a flight ceiling of 150 m.

About 20,000 drones on the mainland are used for civilian purposes. Businesses including agricultural pest control, environmental monitoring and geographic surveying have greatly benefited from the use of drones, according to Zhang Feng, board chairman of the association.