The main objectives of the tenth five-year plan of population and family planning for China are:

(1) the percentage of family planning reaches over 85 percent of the population;

(2) the childbearing level remains at a low level;

(3) the average population growth rate does not exceed 9 per thousand within five years, and the population growth does not exceed 56,000,000;

(4) by the end of 2005, the national population should be controlled to within 1,330,000,000;

(5) to lower the occurrences of preventable birth defect rates of high frequency to a great extent;

(6) to entitle childbearing age people to the basic reproductive health service, and to expand the scope of informed choice in contraceptive use;

(7) to have limited control over the tendency of an unbalanced birth-sex ratio; and

(8) to establish the family planning security system and a working system adapted to the socialist market economy with forceful control, effective management and integral policy and legislation, to preliminarily realize the two changes concerning the ways of thinking and the working methods. (To switch from focusing on family planning alone in the past, to combining it with economic development and taking comprehensive measures to solve the population problem; and to switch gradually from depending mainly on social restriction, to establishing a system combining profit-orientation and social restriction and unifying public education, comprehensive service and scientific management).

By 2015, the plan aims to control the total population within 1,430,000,000, further reduce birth defect rates and improve the quality of the newly-born population; to entitle everyone to better reproductive health services; to further improve people’s standard of living and life quality; to strive to balance the birth-sex ratio to a normal level; to further optimize the population age structure; to fully realize the two changes concerning the ways of thinking and working methods in population and family planning.