A Chinese official said Monday that the country's family planning policy should be unwaveringly adhered to, and would be improved step by step.



The policy is a long-term one and its primary goal is to keep a low birth rate, said Wang Xia, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, at a national conference.



According to the National Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2011, the annual population growth rate stood at 0.479 permillage, down from 0.645 in 2002, when the family planning policy became a national law.



Also at Monday's conference, Wang said that pre-pregnancy check services will be expanded to reach all county-level areas across the country within this year.



Wang noted that migrants' equal access to related public services should be ensured.



At present, such services are available in about 60 percent of county-level areas, covering more than 80 percent of the target population, according to the official.



The official also said that efforts to rectify the gender imbalance are still needed.



The national meeting on family planning came at a time when some scholars and institutes are calling for a reform that allows more Chinese couples to have a second child, as the country faces demographic issues that could lead to labor shortage and an aging society.



"The family planning policy has had an effect in controlling population growth," said Du Peng, a professor studying population at the Renmin University of China, adding that adhering to the policy does not contradict allowing couples to have a second child.



According to a 2012 report issued by the China Development Research Foundation, one of the leading Chinese economic think tanks, the national fertility rate was below 1.5 in 2010, below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, a basic fertility rate the population needs to replace itself from one generation to the next.



Currently the law permits couples who meet certain requirements, for example that both are only children, to have a second child.



"We should also see that the momentum of population growth has changed a lot from the past, and fine tuning of the policy should take into account local conditions," said Zhou Haiwang, a researcher from the Institute of Population and Development Studies under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.



Zhou noted that many couples in urban areas are reluctant to give birth to even one child."For example the average fertility rate in Shanghai is only 0.84 for the past 10 years," he said.



He suggested that in areas with an extremely low fertility rate, measures should be taken to lower the cost for raising a child, encouraging couples to give birth.





Xinhua contributed to this story