China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will ease family planning restrictions nationwide, the government said on Friday, allowing millions of families to have two children in the country's most significant liberalisation of its strict one-child policy in about three decades.

Couples in which one parent is an only child will now be able to have a second child, one of the highlights of a sweeping raft of reforms announced three days after the ruling Communist Party ended a meeting that mapped out policy for the next decade.