The national ratio of maternal mortality in the first half of this year has witnessed an increase of 30.6 percent over the same period of last year, after the country began to implement the two-child policy in January.

China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) revealed that maternal mortality and infant mortality in 2015 had dropped to 20.1 per 100,000 and 8.1 per 100,000 live births respectively, a decline of 62.1 percent and 74.8 percent from 2000,The Beijing News reported on Tuesday.

However, the national ratio of maternal mortality in the first half of this year is 18.3 per 100,000 live births, 30.6 percent higher than the same period of last year, said the report.

China began allowing all couples to have two children on January 1, ending the decades-long one-child policy in the context of a shrinking labor force and aging society.

Ma Xiaowei, deputy head of the NHFPC, said at a conference that the two-child policy allowed couples to fulfill a pent-up desire for a second child and many women chose to get pregnant at a late age, which increased the proportion of elderly parturient women as well as the challenges for healthcare services, said The Beijing News.

Liang Zhongtang, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday that after the two-child policy was implemented, a high proportion of women over 35 have been choosing to have a second child and this group is likely to account for the majority of maternal mortality.

Liang argued that the maternal mortality along with the high proportion of late-in-life pregnancies will drop to a normal level after at most two or three years.

China has been encouraging its citizens to have a second child. The local government of Yichang, Central China's Hubei Province, has recently released an open letter, encouraging employees working in the public sector to have a second child and pledging to provide benefits such as longer maternity leave and free premarital and gynecological check-ups and counseling for women of more advanced age.