A total of 10.035 million newborns will be born in China in 2020 and have already registered with public security organs for household registration, a drop of about 15 percent compared to 2019, a figure that is also nearly 680,000 less than the number of people who will register for the college entrance exam in 2020.
The “National Name Report 2020” released by China’s Ministry of Public Security on Monday (Feb. 8) mentioned that of the 10.035 million newborns registered in 2020, 5.290 million, or 52.7 percent, will be boys and 4.745 million, or 47.3 percent, will be girls. In 2019, 11.79 million newborns will be registered.
Bloomberg News reports that China’s population is aging faster than most of the world’s developed economies, a legacy of its years of Family planning policies.
China has been encouraging childbirth in recent years and has launched a campaign to deal with its aging population, and the communiqué of the fifth meeting of the 18th Communist Party Congress in 2015 stated that the policy of two children per couple will be fully implemented.
Zheng Bingwen, director of the World Social Security Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said at a previous forum in Beijing that “in order to actively respond to the aging population, the most urgent initiative is to reform China’s fertility policy and liberalize childbirth.”
But policy changes and calls from experts don’t seem to have provided much incentive for China to raise its birth rate. The cost of housing, Education and health care has been rising in China in recent years, and the high cost of childcare is a stumbling block for many Chinese people having children.
One Weibo user said, “A poor solution to the house problem also means no place to live and a problematic environment for children to go to school and live in.”
Reuters reported that economic uncertainty from last year’s new crown Epidemic has further influenced the decision to have children, prolonging a long-term trend of declining birth rates in the world’s most populous but rapidly aging country.
Other Chinese netizens believe the fertility rate is related to the social problems that exist today. One Weibo user said, “When employment discrimination and age discrimination are solved and everyone has a stable income, naturally, people will have children.” Another netizen said, “Having more children is good for society, but not necessarily for individuals.”
Other netizens believe that the issue of childbirth should not be decided by people other than themselves and their spouses, and “should not be kidnapped by moral constraints and held hostage by the provisions of the restrictions.”
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