According to statistics from China’s Ministry of Public Security, the birth rate has fallen in what has been described as a crash, with 10.035 million births in 2020, a new low since 1949 and lower than during the three-year famine. After the Chinese government implemented the “comprehensive two-child” policy in 2015, China’s birth rate has declined for four consecutive years, except for a brief surge in 2016, and the number of newborns in 2020 is down nearly 15 percent from the previous year.
According to the Household Management Research Center of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, the number of newborns born and registered in 2020 is 10.035 million. 11.79 million were born in the same year in 2019, and 14.65 million were born in the end, so 1.04 million in the same year in 2020, and 12.48 million are presumed to be born in the end. Compared to the 1.4 billion population, the number of babies born at 12.5 million means that the birth rate has fallen below 1%, with one baby born to 100 people, a figure even lower than during the three-year famine.
Ms. Hsu, who once worked and lived in Shanghai for many years, now chooses to settle back in Taipei. Ms. Hsu told the station that there is a lot of pressure to go to school in China and the cost of childcare is high. For example, she hired a nanny for RMB 7-8,000 a month, not including bonuses. The market in Taipei is around 5,000 RMB. Children in Shanghai to private kindergarten tuition costs 10,000 yuan a month, wait until the private elementary school year to 200,000 yuan, the cost of talent classes is also a major expense.
Ms. Xu: “to compare the prices in Shanghai and Taipei, a piano lesson for beginners in Taipei about 700, 800 yuan (about 200 yuan) or so, they are 7 to 800 yuan. My friend’s child just learned piano and the teacher introduced through others cost 2,000 RMB for one hour.”
The cost of Education on the mainland is higher than in Taiwan
Ms. Xu said, in China to study in public schools to send gifts to teachers, want to find a better public schools have to be introduced through people with contacts which is another expense. The cost of private school in Shanghai is equal to that of a foreign school. With such high tuition fees, can the average middle-class Family afford to raise two children?
Ms. Xu: “I have many friends who have two children. They do not follow the outside world how to raise, they will not insist on a very good public school, must wear brand-name, do not learn many talents, will have two children are relatively simple people I know. But I know more people do not want to have a second child, they feel a lot of pressure, he feels that my salary is spent on the first child, and then have a second child will not have money.”
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the annual births were 17.86 million in 2016, 17.23 million in 2017 and 15.23 million in 2018. on January 17, 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that the annual births for 2019 were 14.65 million, showing that the downward trend of births on the mainland has become.
After the implementation of the “comprehensive two-child” policy in 2015, the total fertility rate briefly shot up to 1.7 in 2016, a significant increase from 2015, but began to decline again in 2017, dropping significantly to about 1.5 in 2018 and basically flat in 2019.
Scholar : China’s fall into the low-fertility trap is confirmed
Liang Jianzhang, a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, wrote an article “2021 forecast: no lowest fertility rate, only lower”, pointing out that the specific situation that arose just after the full liberalization of the two-child policy does not have long-term replicability. As the two-child pile-up effect tends to disappear, the total fertility rate will quickly fall to 1.2 or even lower, and China will undoubtedly fall into a low fertility trap.
According to Liang, with high house price to income ratios in big cities, high childcare costs, and a higher percentage of Chinese women in the workforce than most countries in the world, many working women face the dilemma of whether to get a promotion or have children.
Xu Quan, a PhD candidate at the City University of Hong Kong, explained in an interview with this station that the root cause of China today is still a superposition of both environmental and economic problems. The environmental problem is due to the industrialization of education and medical care in China, so the cost of education and medical care has increased. For example, China has had environmental problems such as fake vaccines and poor quality milk powder, which also drive Chinese Parents to be less willing to spend huge costs in having and raising many children.
Xu Quan: “Since the cost of childbirth in China is very high, parents have to go out to work to earn a double salary, and if they have another child, China’s policy encourages more than one, the financial burden is too heavy, and with no one to help take care of them, although some people will be willing to have a second child, but they do not receive the expected effect.”
Tuition fees rose alarmingly after the privatization of education on the mainland
Xu Quan further explained that China has industrialized education along with healthcare. In many first-tier cities in China, the national high schools and national primary schools are originally public schools, but after China’s official reform, they have become education groups, which are privatized with public resources, also known as “state-owned private” schools.
Xu Quan: “After privatization, profit is the priority, and people have to pay a high price to attend these schools. Because the Chinese tradition can not be suffering children, poor can not be poor education. Driven by this philosophy, people have to pay a very high price to go to a very good school, even in the school’s domicile. Now it’s all about the school principal single-handedly holding the quota for admission to the school, and this extra cost you may have to give gifts, which costs a lot of money.”
Hsiao Cheng-tai warns of China’s declining demographic dividend 2030 to catch up with aging US population
Cheng-Tai Hsueh, a professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University, has been studying population issues for a long Time. Hsueh told us that when China opened up its “two-child” policy, he wrote that he expected the effect of fertility stimulation would only be “short-lived”.
In addition, the development of China’s reform and opening up, because of the awakening of knowledge, transportation and information dissemination, the young people in rural areas and ethnic minorities have also reduced their fertility rate with modernization. Xue Chengtai said that the fertility rate of any country in the world, including African countries, has dropped as soon as they modernized.
The total fertility rate is below 1.3, and if a woman has an average of 1.3 children, many welfare measures will be of little use. Rural China is still higher than 1.3, Taiwan last year is not even 1. His political system can pour the country’s efforts and still have a chance to come back with forced and semi-forced methods.”
Xue Chengtai pointed out that China still enjoys a demographic dividend, that is, the working population between 15 and 60 years old, accounting for more than 66.7% of the total population is called the “demographic dividend”. Mainland China now has 71 percent, which will end early because of the declining fertility rate and fewer children.
Xue Chengtai: “In China, what matters is not the number of people, but the demographic structure and early aging. Even by this point in time, the percentage of elderly people in the U.S. is still higher than in mainland China, which will catch up with the U.S. in 2030 in terms of its elderly population if it continues with its current development.”
China’s population is entering an avalanche of sharp decline. Now, among the world’s 7 billion people, an average of one in ten is Chinese, but in fifteen to twenty years, it will be reduced to one Chinese for every twenty or so people, and in twenty years in China, an average of five elderly people will correspond to one young person under the age of 30. This is a super-aging society never seen in human history, which will test the social security safety net of medical care, Medicine, pension, and artificial intelligence.
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