Wall Street Journal reports that China's lawmakers will allow all couples to have two children from the beginning of next year, implementing a new birth policy aimed at mitigating a potential demographic crisis. In a congressional meeting Sunday, Chinese lawmakers approved the new birth policy, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2016, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Top Communist Party leaders had previously approved the new policy.The announcement sets a timeline for a policy that will replace the country's controversial 35-year-old one-child policy. The National Health and Family Planning Commission, which implements China's reproduction policy, said at the time it would move slowly to avoid population spikes.

CNBC writes that China's sharp slowdown was chosen as the top business story of 2015 by business editors at The Associated Press, followed by the plunge in energy prices. It took five years for people to become really worried over China's slow-motion economic deceleration. The freak-out finally hit global markets in August. Between Aug. 10 and Aug. 25, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 11 percent on fears that everyone had underestimated China's troubles and their impact on the rest of the world. China's deceleration is part of an official plan to shift from unsustainable growth from exports and wasteful investment to slower but steadier expansion based on consumer spending. Yet its leaders tarnished their reputation for economic stewardship by clumsily intervening to prop up plunging stock prices. Then they shocked and confused markets by devaluing the Chinese currency. Economists began to conclude that China's official story — that its economy was growing at around a brisk 7 percent a year — was far too rosy and that growth might be closer to 5 percent or 6 percent and likely to weaken further.