BEIJING: China has relaxed its family planning policy to allow couples to have three children after a census showed its population is rapidly ageing, state media reported on Monday, further unwinding four decades of controls in the world's most populous nation which have strangled the birthrate.

For almost 40 years, China enforced a controversial 'one-child policy' - one of the strictest family planning regulations worldwide - which was relaxed in 2016 to a 'two-child policy' due to widespread concerns over an ageing workforce and economic stagnation.