The government and demographic authorities have made a 180-degree U-turn in their positions on China’s population problem. This reveals the extraordinary seriousness of China’s population problem. Its severity is underscored by the fact that China is facing a serious low fertility rate or negative growth trap.
The total fertility rate in China is already below the warning line, and this has become the consensus of both government and academia. The total fertility rate refers to the total number of children born to each woman during her childbearing years (15-49 years old), and is an important indicator of population trends. It is accepted in demographic circles that the total fertility rate must be at least 2.1 in order to maintain a basically stable population between the upper and lower generations and to reach a normal level of generation replacement. The demographic community also considers 1.5 as a critical point, below which the fertility level is very low. China’s current total fertility rate is below 1.5, which has caused concern among civil affairs authorities and academics. Minister of Civil Affairs Li Jiheng confessed that China’s total fertility rate has fallen below the warning line and the population development has entered a critical turning point. And some demographers say that China’s total fertility rate has fallen below 1.5 in 2018, seriously below the requirement for generational replacement.
More seriously, China’s actual total fertility rate is much lower than the officially acknowledged 1.5. According to the birth population projections released by the National Bureau of Statistics, although the fertility rates in 2018 and 2019 are 1.495 and 1.47, respectively, China’s fertility rate is actually only between 1.1 and 1.2 in 2018 and 2019 if the cumulative effect of the policy on second-child births is deducted. In his article “Forecast for 2021: No Lowest Fertility Rate, Only Lower”, Liang Jianzhang, a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, bluntly points out that China’s total fertility rate will rapidly fall to 1.2 or even lower, and that China has fallen into the “low-fertility trap” (the low-fertility trap). “The low-fertility trap is undeniable.
The “low-fertility trap” was first proposed by Austrian scholar Wolfgang Lutz and others in 2006. One of their key arguments is that once a country enters the “low-fertility trap,” it is difficult to extricate itself from it. He explains the “self-reinforcing mechanism” of the “low-fertility trap” in three ways. From a demographic perspective, low fertility leads to a lower number of women of childbearing age, and a lower number of women of childbearing age leads to a lower fertility rate; from a sociological perspective, a reduction in the ideal Family size for couples of childbearing age leads to a reduction in the number of children born to the younger generation when they reach childbearing age; from an economic perspective, a reduction in fertility raises living standards, and in order to raise living standards, people will further reduce In economic terms, lower fertility rates will raise living standards, and in order to raise living standards, people will have fewer children, etc. Paradoxically, the 2006 study by Lutz et al. and his “low-fertility trap” is now playing out in China. This explains the sudden 180-degree shift in the position of once vocal Chinese officials and some demographers. The “self-reinforcing mechanism” in the analysis also reveals the mechanism that makes it difficult for China to pull itself out of the “low-fertility trap” even if Chinese officials change their stance on family planning and implement an open-fertility policy.
According to another group of demographers, the change in China’s official stance on family planning came too late. If the abolition of the one-child policy had occurred more than a decade or two ago, the effect would have been very different. Wang Feng, a population expert who teaches at an American university, says China should have made the change in 1992 when fertility levels dropped below arable land levels. Now, there is a larger trend in Chinese society: late Marriage, late childbearing and even infertility, a trend that makes the complete abolition of birth control now meaningless, the “baby boom” cannot return, and the sharp shrinkage of China’s population is difficult to alleviate.
The negative effects of China’s dramatic population contraction on the country’s rise are obvious in many ways. This means, first of all, further aging. China’s population of people over 60 years of age has surpassed 250 million in 2019, with a population share of 18.1%, and will reach 25% in 2030. Such rapid aging will severely constrain China’s economic vitality, tighten labor supply, hit the pension and healthcare system, and weaken China’s competitiveness internationally. Some say that the only strong enemy of China’s renaissance is China’s low fertility rate and aging population, not the United States at all. In contrast, the United States, with a fertility rate of 1.87 in 2018 and an immigrant population to supplement the labor force shortage, is under much less pressure than China’s aging population.
In short, the Chinese Communist Party‘s coercive approach to population control worked for a while, but now it is difficult to get people to have more children by opening up fertility and allowing them to reproduce on their own. For Chinese policymakers, the “low fertility trap,” along with the disappearance of the labor force demographic dividend and the imminent onset of heavy aging, comes at an important historical juncture in China’s attempt to catch up economically with the United States, which is likely to be too much for those in power in the CCP who want to overtake the United States as soon as possible.
In this regard, Time and momentum are not on the side of the CCP.
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