China named the first baby born at a Beijing hospital Thursday as the 1.3 billionth person of the world’s most populous nation, more than two decades after a one-child policy was introduced to keep its numbers in check.

China’s population exploded after the late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong exhorted the people to multiply in the 1950s to make the country strong. But China put the brakes on growth with the tough one-child rule and is now worried about finding jobs for the masses and caring for the elderly.

The baby boy was born at 12:02 a.m. at the Beijing Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics and weighed 3.66 kg (eight lb).

“I am the happiest guy in the world and my boy will be blessed all his life,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted the newborn’s father, 37-year-old Air China employee Zhang Tong, as saying.

But the birth was not such good news for China’s family planners.

“1.3 billion is a vast number. It will put great pressure on the economy, society, resources and the environment,” the China Daily quoted Wang Guoqiang, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.

Demographers credited the government’s one-child policy for delaying China’s population hitting the 1.3 billion mark.

ACCUSATIONS OF FORCED ABORTIONS

But in a rare admission of official flaws, the China Daily said the one-child policy may have gone wrong at times.

“Admittedly, the family planning policy has gone awry in some places,” it said in an editorial said without elaborating. “But the policy should continue to be endorsed.”

Human rights groups have accused overzealous Chinese family planners of forcing women to abort, in some case in the ninth month of pregnancy, or undergo hysterectomies.

A hefty fine is slapped on urban residents with more than one child. Rural folk and members of ethnic minority groups can have a maximum of two children.

While the rules have helped China curb its birth rate from more than 33 births per 1,000 population in 1970 to less than 8 per 1,000 per year three decades later, the country faces new demographic challenges over how to support an aging population.

Demographers say the most immediate issue is not how to support China’s graying masses - which they point out won’t hit numbers comparable to Europe’s until about 2020 - but how to employ them.

China is expected to add eight million to its population each year, the U.N. Population Fund says, and has no plans to ease the one-child policy despite concerns of low urban birth rates.

The rules on family size have also created a gender imbalance, with about 117 boys for 100 girls, as a cultural preference for sons prompts couples, usually in rural areas, to abort girls.

The birth rate is highest in the largely rural, impoverished west, while it is lowest in booming Shanghai.

“The government has to deal with the unbalanced structure of the population that is still very large,” demographer Zhai Zhenwu said.

At the end of 2003, the total world population stood at 6.27 billion people, according to the World Bank.

India, the world’s second-most populous nation, has just over 1 billion people and could overtake China by 2035 if current trends continue, according to India’s census office.