BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The rate of cesarean section surgeries in China has risen again since 2016 after staying generally stable in the 2012-2016 period, Health News reported on Friday, citing results of a research.

The rate of cesarean sections has risen by an average 3.5 percent year on year since 2016, compared with the annual growth rate of 4.6 percent in the years before 2012, according to the research led by Liu Jianmeng, director of the Institute of Reproductive and Child Health of Peking University and the key laboratory on reproductive health under the National Health Commission.

The rise since 2016 is possibly linked to continuous improvement of health services in rural areas, and the higher number of women giving birth at an advanced age who had gone through cesarean sections before as the country loosened the one-child policy, according to the research.

It attributed the stable level of cesarean sections between 2012 and 2016 to the government's measures to control unnecessary birth surgeries.

It also found that the rate of cesarean sections in mega-cities dropped 2.1 percent on average each year while the percentage in most other cities remained stable and that in rural areas rose 2.9 percent year on year.

A thesis of the research was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.