China's recently announced two-child policy will likely take effect soon following necessary legal procedures, an official of China's top legislature said Friday.

   Shen Chunyao, a member of the 11th Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, called the new policy an "important adjustment" in China's social policy prompted by demographic changes, including a rapidly aging population.

   "It can be implemented only after the law is amended," he said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency during a trip to Seoul to publicize the outcome of a recent meeting of the Communist Party's policy-making Central Committee.

   "I think it will be made official in the not too distant future," he said.

   The new policy was announced after the party meeting in late October, allowing Chinese couples to have two children instead of one.

   China had introduced the one-child policy in 1979 to slow the population growth rate. (Yonhap)