TRYING TO DEFUSE A DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB, China looks at population growth policies. “The focus sets the stage for a host of rule changes regarding health, pensions, social welfare and possibly lifting the caps on children some families can have, the person said. More than three decades into an industrial boom that has created the world’s second-largest economy, China’s struggling to get rich before it grows old. The working-age population shrank for the first time in at least two decades last year as growth slowed, echoing Japan’s downturn in the late 1990s. As part of the shift, the party may lower its hard growth target of 7 percent to a range between 6.5 percent and 7 percent and make that a flexible guideline, the person said.”