The Chinese government enacted several reforms, it announced on Friday, including easing the longtime one-child policy.
The Los Angeles Times reports that families will now be allowed a second child if either parent is an only child. The goal would be to enhance the "long-term balanced development of the population of China, while still regulating family size.
The change to this rule could allow around 10 million families to have a second child, demographers say. The original law, enacted in 1980, allowed a couple to have two children if both parents were an only child.
China's National Health and Family Planning Commission spoke positively of the law, saying it prevented 400 million births and allowed the country to keep its population in line. While demographers claim that the law could hurt the country in the long run as it created a gender imbalance, with more boys than girls, and not enough workers as the population gets older.
The labor camps, or "re-education through labor" system, has also been abolished, The Associated Press reports. "This is progress," Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing lawyer, said.
"There have been many methods used recently by this government that are against the rule of law, and do not respect human rights, or freedom of speech, but by abolishing the labor camps ... it makes it much harder for the police to put these people they clamp down on into labor camps."
Labor camps were introduced by the Chinese government often to round up people who disagreed with the Communist Party over issues like corruption and land rights.