“China is still deliberating whether to further relax the country’s one-child policy by allowing a couple in which only one party is an only child to have two children, a spokesman for the country’s health and family planning authority said Friday,” Xinhua reports (8/2). “Beijing is under pressure to ease its grip on child birth in response to calls for more personal freedom in an increasingly affluent society,” the Wall Street Journal writes, adding, “Such a move is also aimed at offsetting the financial effects of an aging society and addressing potential labor shortages in the years ahead” (Qi, 8/5). “According to the 21st Century Business Herald, the updated family planning policy could come as early as later this year,” the Huffington Post notes (Davis, 8/5).