China will keep its controversial family-planning policies for at least another decade, the country's top family-planning official said, damping any expectations of a change....

Zhang Weiqing, minister of China's State Population and Family Planning Commission, told China's state-run China Daily newspaper that abandoning the policies at this point would cause "serious problems," put a strain on economic development, and cause more problems than it would solve....

"The current family-planning policy, formed as a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions," Mr. Zhang said. "It has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth."...

Critics of the policies have pushed for change, saying a lower birthrate may actually lead to social difficulties because there will be fewer young working adults to pay taxes and look after the elderly. Coerced abortions and sterilizations have also been connected to the rules, and critics blame them for the current imbalanced sex ratio in China.

Expectation had been building that there could be a possibility of a revision to the policy since a vice-minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission said last month that the government was considering an incremental relaxation of its family-planning policies. But now, it appears that the government wants to clarify its position....

Mr. Zhang said an overhaul would be a simplistic approach to solving population-related woes. "Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now," he said.