Statistics released on Thursday indicate remarkable effect of China's second-child policy fully implemented in 2015, which sees an average annual population growth in 2016 and 2017 of one million more births than the previous five years. 

The statistics released by China's National Bureau of Statistics said that the new-born babies' population in 2016 and 2017 was 17.86 million and 17.23 million respectively, compared with the average new-born population of 16.44 million during the previous five years (2011-2015).

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago, China's total population has grown from 540 million in 1949 to nearly 1.4 billion in 2018, with an average annual growth rate of about 1.4 percent, the report said.

"The total population has grown steadily and the quality of the population has improved significantly," the report concluded.

The average length of education of China's working-age population has been increased from 8 years to 10.63 years (roughly from junior-school level to high-school level) between 1982 and 2018. This trend guaranteed more knowledge-based, skilled and innovative talents to contribute to building society.

In 2012, the total working-age population in China reached a peak of 922 million. After that, although the total population entered a decreasing stage, the number of 900 million in 2018 still shows huge labor resources.

China's family planning policy launched in 1970s eased the pressure on the surging population. 

However, the dramatically economic development and the social transformation lead to great changes to the Chinese people's conception of fertility and the decrease of number of birth, which has brought about the full implementation of the second-child policy. The second-child policy can ease the pressure on an aging society, the report said.

According to the report, it only takes China 18 years to grow from adult society to aged society. People aged above 65 years old accounts for 11.9 percent of China's whole population; while the portion of people aged between 0 to 14 years old decreased to 16.9 percent in 2018, compared with 22.9 percent of 2000.