Demographic data from many local governments in China indicate that the country’s birth rate is declining significantly. A few days ago, experts pointed out that the nation’s population collapse has arrived, citing the over-ageing of the northeast as an example of the economic and aging crisis China will face in the future.
Radio Free Asia reports that birth statistics released by some local governments in China show that the nation’s birth rate is declining, in some places plunging 32 percent compared to the same period in 2019.
Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is an expert in Chinese population studies and the author of the book “The Great Nation’s Empty Nest: Chinese Family Planning Gone Astray. He recently tweeted on social media that “today’s Northeast is the nation’s tomorrow,” citing the Northeast, which has a lower fertility rate than the nation as an example.
Yi stressed that one of the reasons for the Northeast’s economic decline from 13.1 percent of the country’s economy in 1980 to 9.1 percent in 2010 and 5.0 percent in 2020 is aging. By the Time other provinces reach the current age structure of the Northeast, the economic growth rate will not reach the current level of the Northeast, which will affect the national economic development.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China shows that the birth rate in the three northeastern provinces was only 0.61% in 2019, even lower than the 0.68% birth rate in Japan in the same year, which ranks first in the world in terms of aging.
Yi Fuxian sorted out the reasons for the declining fertility rate in the northeast, including the high level of urbanization, mostly immigrants with shallow roots in traditional fertility Culture, the high proportion of the institutional population that mostly abides by government family planning, the ease of national policies to penetrate the northeast, and finally, the low Marriage rate but high divorce rate and late age of marriage and childbirth.
Liang Jianzhang, founder of China Ctrip and professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, recently wrote that a national population collapse has arrived and that this decline will not bottom out if the fertility rate cannot be significantly increased.
According to data published around the country and local media sources, the number of births in the Wenzhou area in 2020 will be about 73,230, down 19.01 percent from the same period in 2019; the number of births in Hefei City in 2020 is down about 23 percent from 2019; and the number of births in Taizhou City in 2020 is down 32.6 percent from 2019, Liang said in an article on Caixin.com.
Liang suggests that a shift in fertility policy, lower housing costs, and reduced tax rates should be made before a fundamental boost in fertility can be achieved.
Feinian Chen of the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, who studies population development, noted that past demographic observations show that there is a huge drop in the population between the 25-29 age bracket and the 30-34 age bracket, with the former being the prime age for Chinese women to have children, enough to be about 1 percent less than the next age bracket.
“That drop is about 1 percent, or about 14 million people. There’s a huge drop in the number of women who are capable of having children, or are in their prime childbearing years.” Chen Him Nim said.
She pointed out that if the fertility rate continues to be low in the future, the pressure of an aging population will follow, which will not only affect the economy, but also give rise to social problems such as care for the elderly population. Even if the government intends to save the fertility rate, it still won’t help for now.
“In the case of China, it’s happening much faster than the rest of the world because the fertility rate in China is falling rapidly and the mortality rate is falling as a result.” She said.
The “China Fertility Report 2020,” released by the China Evergrande Institute on Oct. 13 last year, points out that although China’s total population has surpassed the 1.4 billion mark in 2019, the country’s population is about to fall into a negative growth situation due to national policies and the rising cost of childcare, and China is about to step into an advanced age However, due to national policies and the rising cost of childcare, China’s population is about to fall into negative growth, and the country is about to enter an aging society, with problems such as “aging before getting rich”.
The report points out that although China has implemented a “comprehensive two-child” policy since 2016, which has to some extent alleviated the aging trend, China’s birth rate has declined for two consecutive years as the costs of housing, healthcare and Education are rising rapidly. This indicates that the effect of the “two-child” policy has faded significantly.
The report predicts that China will be in a state of negative population growth between 2021 and 2025; in 2022, the proportion of people over 65 years old will be more than 15% of the total population, which means that China is entering an advanced age society; in 2033, the proportion of people over 65 years old will be more than 20% of the total population, becoming a super advanced age society; starting from about 2050, the total population of China will shrink sharply; and by 2100, the total population of China will be more than 20 years old. By 2100, China’s population is estimated to be less than 800 million, and by then China’s share of the global population will have fallen from the current 19 percent to 7 percent.
Earlier, Zhou Xiaozheng, a retired teacher from the National People’s Congress of China, also told Radio Free Asia that the wrong policies of the Chinese Communist Party have caused the current demographic disorder.
He pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party’s “family planning” policy has created the unique “tragedy of the lost families,” with millions of families in China estimated to have lost their only child to an elderly parent who is no longer able to raise a child.
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