The prevalence of infertility in China has increased at a faster-than-expected rate in the past decade, dealing yet another blow to a nation that is finding it harder and harder to get people to have children, according to a leading reproductive specialist, reported The South China Morning Post.

   The world’s second-largest economy saw its infertility rate rise from 12 per cent in 2007 to 18 per cent in 2020, meaning that one out of every 5.6 couples of childbearing age faces difficulties making a baby, according to the latest national reproductive health survey led by Qiao Jie, a reproductive doctor and biologist.

Earlier this year, Sun Xi, a member of Jiangsu province’s top political advisory body, had estimated that the prevalence of infertility in China would rise to 18 per cent by 2025, based on the official infertility rate of 12.5 to 15 per cent in 2016. But it seems to have already reached that 18 per cent threshold, the newspaper reported.

The Chinese government recently announced a three child policy.

China's three child policy will not be able to increase the country's  birth rate drastically, experts said.

“I don’t think we can drastically raise the birth rate,” Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, said in an interview with The South China Morning Post.

The government’s move to allow families to have three children could lead to a short-term increase in births, but “we cannot expect the effect to continue for a long time,” he said.

“We’d better prepare for an ageing society,” said Yao, one of a group of economists who consulted President Xi Jinping and top economic official Liu He last year. “That is the destiny of East Asian societies.”

China relaxed its family planning policy, supporting couples who wish to have three children.

The policy shift was approved by President Xi Jinping in a politburo meeting, state media had said.

In 2016, China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy, replacing it with a two-child limit that has failed to lead to a sustained rise in births.

The government's latest population policy move, Xinhua had said, will come with "supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources".