Family planning officials welcomed the new title and the pending reforms to the 22-year-old State Family Planning Commission. The changes will strengthen the role and effectiveness of the new body in dealing with population development.

Plans to change the State Family Planning Commission into the State Population and Family Planning Commission, submitted by the State Council, were yesterday adopted by the ongoing first session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC).

"The old family planning commission could not effectively co-ordinate comprehensively over various issues relating to population policy, which goes far beyond mere family planning," a member of the 10th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Yang Kuifu, told China Daily.

China's population administration has, to date, been linked to a string of departments, including the family planning commission, health departments, development and planning authorities, statistics departments and the ethnic affairs commission. But there was no single, overall authority to address the complex and wide-ranging family planning and population issue.

Yang, vice-president of the National Family Planning Association and former vice-director of the State Family Planning Commission, said the change has been a long-standing motion of the family planning authorities dating back to the 1980s.

"I put forward a proposal in 1986 advising a change from family planning authority to population authority when I was the director of the Liaoning Provincial Family Planning Commission at that time," said Yang.

One of Yang's reasons was that it was not appropriate to narrowly summarize a department's function with such a specific title, even though family planning is a core national policy of China.

Yang's proposal was, however, not then adopted.

But in an effort by family planning authorities at grassroots level to change the emphasis of their work and also to expand the scope of their department, the Guangzhou municipal government renamed their municipal family planning commission in 2000, calling it the Guangzhou Population and Family Planning Bureau.

The emphasis of population work has been transferred gradually to bring about healthier births, said Xie Anguo, vice-director of the bureau.

He highlighted the fact that China has made tremendous progress in bringing its population numbers under control through family planning.