The Chinese government’s seventh population census, released May 10, announced that the country’s population totaled 1.41 billion, with an average population growth rate of 0.04 percent lower over the past decade than the average growth rate of the previous decade. The report said, “The data show that China’s population has continued to grow at a low rate over the past decade.” In 2020, China’s total fertility rate for women of childbearing age will be 1.3. China’s fertility rate has repeatedly declined in recent years, and more and more modern young people are choosing to marry later, have children later, or even not to marry and have children. The Chinese government has not yet fully liberalized fertility restrictions, but is gradually trying to salvage the growing demographic crisis by promoting “family culture” and traditional filial piety.
The liberalization of fertility restrictions in the three eastern provinces: a rumor that touches people’s hearts
On Feb. 18, a few days before China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), a response from the National Health Commission, posted on its website, to a NPC deputy’s suggestion that the country take the lead in fully liberalizing birth control in the northeastern region, drew the attention of the national and world media – “The northeastern region can explore based on the local reality”. The few lines of the reply caused a strong backlash, with speculation that the three eastern provinces would soon fully liberalize their birth restrictions. In addition to various discussions in the media and social media platforms, February 19 as of midday closing, A shares of the “second child concept” in the shares of Gaol, Bainimax, Baby Friendly, including a number of shares up. Although the Health and Welfare Commission immediately clarified two days later that “the northeast will pilot the liberalization of birth restrictions and other speculation is not the intention of the reply”, the discussion on the full liberalization of birth restrictions netizens enthusiasm, but its basic views can be summarized as – too late!
Although there are many different opinions on the weak economic indicators and performance of the three eastern provinces in recent years, with GDP growth, per capita income and consumption often varying greatly from place to place, one indisputable fact is that the three eastern provinces have suffered serious population decline in recent years. According to official data reviewed by the Voice of America, the population of the three eastern provinces declined by about 3.5 million in the five years from 2014 to 2019.
Total population of Heilongjiang Province 2014-19 (compiled by Voice of America based on data released by Heilongjiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics)
Jilin Province 2014-19 population total (compiled by Voice of America based on data released by the Jilin Provincial Bureau of Statistics)
Total population of Liaoning Province 2014-19 (compiled by Voice of America based on data released by the Liaoning Provincial Bureau of Statistics)
Economic structural transformation has led to an intensified population exodus from resource-based cities in the northeast, and the empty nest phenomenon is serious. At the same time, young people’s desire to have children is declining. The National Bureau of Statistics just released the results of the seventh population census report, showing that the population of the northeast region accounted for 6.98% of the country, a decline of 1.2%. According to demographer Yi Fuxian, author of “The Empty Nest in the Big Country,” the total fertility rate in the three eastern provinces dropped from 1.89 per capita in 1981 to 0.9 in 2000 and 0.56 in 2015, a figure far below the national average fertility rate of 1.05 in the same year.
The naked reality: more and more young urbanites are no longer willing to take on the task of having children
“The Northeast’s today is the nation’s tomorrow,” warned Yi Fuxian. “Among young people, the number of 20-24 year olds getting married, which was still 9.53 million in 2011, became 4.36 million in 2018 and will be only 3.65 million in 2019.”
On New Year’s Day 2021, 27 babies came into the world in a hospital in Shanghai. In contrast, on New Year’s Day 1990, the number was 2,784. that is, the number of newborns in Shanghai on New Year’s Day 2021 is only 1% of what it was 31 years ago.
Statistics released by the Information Center of the Beijing Municipal Health Commission on April 9 show that the number of births to the household population in Beijing in 2020 will be only about 100,000, down 24.3 percent from 132,000 in 2019, a decade-long low.
In an interview with Voice of America, Lu Jiehua, professor of sociology at Peking University, analyzed, “In general, the post-80s and post-90s generation, the main body of births, have changed their mindset and don’t want to have too many children. Their goal in life is not to have children. They are more focused on career development and meeting personal needs, and selectivity is changing. In addition, the number and proportion of women of childbearing age is declining, which, combined with late marriage and late childbearing, has caused China’s fertility rate to continue to decline.”
Lu Xi, 30, has been living in Beijing from her hometown in Shanxi for eight years and is a staunch infertility advocate. The reason is simple: he doesn’t like children. Lu Xi told Voice of America, “I never liked kids growing up, and decided not to have kids when I was in junior high school, and the rest of the family didn’t like it very much either, and taking kids to play or whatever was just to maintain a basic sense of responsibility.”
Thirty years old from the Chinese tradition is already an advanced age of marriage and childbirth, but Lu Xi does not feel like an anomaly: “around friends have children is not much, many have cats, my college roommates do not have children, I also have no pressure.” The only annoying time is the urging of her parents and relatives, but she said she will not waver in her determination and has discussed with her best friend the intention of joint retirement in the future. Catching up on dramas, traveling, raising cats and falling in love, she feels her life is full enough.
Although she does not care whether the government takes any measures to solve the problem of population decline, Lu Xi still believes that the promotion of women’s rights is the key: “I think the only way to alleviate the low fertility rate is for the government to pay more attention to women’s rights and reduce the part of the cost of childbirth borne by the company, thus reducing the discrimination against women in the workplace. This also includes co-ed maternity leave, as well as a focus on educating men to take more responsibility in the family.”
Heavy financial pressures keep modern young people’s desire to have children at record lows
On many Chinese parenting websites and forums, the terms “money crusher” and “gold-digging beast” are two frequently cited synonyms for the high cost of having and raising children. Parents spend a lot of money on any stage of their child’s development, from maternity to delivery, and from birth to school. According to a study released in December 2020 by the Consumer Finance Research Center of Suning Financial Research Institute, among the 10 cities with the highest cost of raising a child, the highest ranking cities of North, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are all above 2 million yuan, and even Changchun, which ranks 10th, costs 1.125 million yuan. In addition, the high housing prices in first- and second-tier cities, as well as medical and pension expenses are the source of pressure for people not to have children.
Zhang Nanfeng, a 42-year-old Beijing girl who works for a Japanese company in Beijing and has been married for 10 years, agrees with her husband on the issue of not having children because she does not want to lower the quality of life and does not have the confidence that she can raise the next generation well. In an interview with the Voice of America, Wenyi Liang said she and her husband were urged by their parents before they turned 38, but now they don’t ask about it anymore. “Sometimes I think about having nothing to live for in old age, but times are changing and who knows what will happen in the future, so let’s live in the present. I don’t feel any pressure because I’m surrounded by friends who don’t have children. When people talk about the conflicts and quarrels arising from parents bringing up their children, and the struggles arising from tutoring their children’s homework, I’m glad I didn’t have children.”
Although Zhang Nanfeng occasionally feels that “children are the motivation for parents to change and make them more self-disciplined,” ultimately the lifestyle of “no children can better arrange their own time and take a trip whenever they want” makes the couple feel more free. The couple feels more free and at ease.
For the next fertility policy, Professor Lu Jiehua said he would suggest the government to fully liberalize, but it is not clear whether the government will adopt it, and even if it does, the effect may not be very obvious. “But it is better to liberalize than not to liberalize, which is a signal. Now it is more urgent to first liberalize, and then have some supporting measures and support system to follow up. If the fertility rate falls to that level in South Korea and then rebound, it will be even more difficult. Now the fertility rate, even if not back up, to maintain a steady decline is okay, afraid that the policy has not been adjusted, has fallen sharply, then it is difficult to change.”
Zhang Nanfeng, who insists on not having children, however, feels how the policy actually does not change the perception of modern women. “The bottom of the fertility rate actually has little to do with the policy, want to give birth to more poor will be born, do not want to give birth to the policy how good will not be born. Policy is just the icing on the cake, or the weight of the idea when swinging, but how much weight can account for it is not easy to say.”
One weekend after the Spring Festival, she and her husband decided to go to Hebei for a long weekend of skiing. In their opinion it was much more interesting than sending their children to piano lessons soccer lessons.
Officials quietly set off “public opinion leading”: is it too late?
The two sessions held in March this year released the 65-chapter-long “14th Five-Year Plan Outline”, of which Chapter 45 specifically mentions “implementing a national strategy to actively deal with population aging”. Compared with the chapter of “Active Response to Aging” in the 13th Five-Year Plan, this section of the 14th Five-Year Plan has doubled in length and has set quantitative requirements for “one old and one small” service programs. The number of requirements for the “one old and one small” service programs, such as “more than 500,000 new model universal care places”. In fact, as early as April 2019, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Guidance on Promoting the Development of Infant and Toddler Care Services for Children Under the Age of 3”, but for most families with newborns, parents or nannies are still the main form of assistance in childcare, and finding a reliable and affordable childcare center is simply difficult.
In mid-April, the Central People’s Bank, in a rare move, published a lengthy working paper on population issues, “Understanding and Responses to China’s Demographic Transition,” in which it was mentioned that “a single policy is not effective in dealing with such a major issue as demographic transition. Not only should we liberalize childbirth, but also encourage it”, which was considered by many readers as a weathervane to detect public opinion before the release of the seventh census report to pave the way for a fully liberalized fertility policy.
Asked what measures the government should take to boost the fertility rate, Yi Fuxian replied, “To encourage fertility, all the shortcomings need to be made up. But we don’t know where the shortcomings are. Improve housing and lower housing prices? First of all, the Chinese government does not have that much financial resources. I think China should liberalize academic research and let many scholars participate. This needs a comprehensive assessment. We should allow scholars the freedom to study how to raise fertility at low cost.”
In March, the covers of two versions of the textbook Morality and the Rule of Law (the second book of the third grade) published by the People’s Education Press caught the attention of parents. The cover of the textbook before the revision was a family of three together, with the daughter flying a kite; while on the cover of the textbook distributed in the new semester, the kite in the girl’s hand was gone, and the mother and father were pushing a baby carriage: the little girl was ushering in her younger brother (sister).
In response, some netizens jokingly said, “Raising children is too expensive, the second child is coming, even kites are not affordable!”
Chinese government to strengthen the promotion of traditional family values
On March 28, the book “Excerpts from Xi Jinping’s Discourse on Focusing on Family Education and Family Style”, edited by the Institute of Party History and Documentation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was released nationwide. In the years prior to this, the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), the official organization for women’s work in China, had been trying to create a nationwide atmosphere in which traditional ideas of “respect for the elderly, love for the young, love for the husband and wife, filial piety for the children and harmony for the neighbors” were making a comeback by giving lectures, producing online propaganda films and conducting activities at the grassroots level.
“Now the state is certainly to encourage the birth of children, but not to say that women return to the family not to work, or how to develop the economy with less labor ah. The 14th Five-Year Plan is also more rational, proposing that men and women should take maternity leave together. The promotion of traditional family values is the main work of the Women’s Federation in recent years. But when it comes to local governments, the level of implementation varies.” A staff member of an international NGO in China (anonymous at the request of the interviewee) commented.
However, such a grand and vague theme as “building family ethics” often turns into the promotion of “women’s virtue,” “filial piety,” “three virtues” and “four virtues” at the local level. The three virtues of obedience” and other stereotypes that do not fit well with the modern social climate.
On April 12, nearly 10 feminist-related groups were blocked on Douban, one of China’s largest social media communities, from a few hundred to tens of thousands of people. Analysts say that some groups advocating that women should not marry or have children have struck a nerve with officials and run counter to their general policy of encouraging women to have children, especially on the eve of the release of the seventh census bulletin, and that their advocacy was too harsh and thus were killed.
Can the “divorce calm law” save modern people from fleeing marriage and family?
The Ministry of Civil Affairs’ “divorce calmness law”, which was just released this year, has sparked “public outrage”. Since the implementation of the one-month “divorce cooling-off period” on New Year’s Day 2021, there has been almost overwhelming criticism of the new rule on the Internet, with people complaining why there is no “marriage cooling-off period” and that the new rule has made some people more afraid of lenient marriages. The new rules have instead made some people more fearful of lenient marriages.
“This cooling-off period reflects the painstaking efforts of the lawmakers. Marriage is a high level contract and should be regulated. Fertility is supposed to be the glue that holds marriage together, so such a provision may promote fertility, although there is no direct relationship. The legislative purpose of the cooling-off period should be to bring marriage back to rationality and not move to divorce.” In an interview with the Voice of America, Liu Sen, a lawyer at Beijing-based Deheheng Law Firm, said the divorce cooling-off period may not reduce the divorce rate, but it can represent the official attitude: “People all over the world have such values, it’s just that the Chinese government is more pragmatic and efficient.”
“Of course you can’t say that not letting people get divorced randomly anymore will necessarily make people have more children, but this legislation is considered in terms of the stable structure of society. If everyone is very spontaneous, the society will not be able to function. Although it is impossible to quantify, I think it will eventually affect and promote the improvement of fertility level.”
In this regard, population expert Yi Fuxian also feels that the establishment of a divorce cooling-off period has positive implications for maintaining traditional family values: “Divorce cooling-off periods are a common practice in many countries and should not be blamed. China’s divorce rate is now too high and too easy. The divorce rate in the Northeast is almost three times higher than Japan’s, the highest in the world, and the fertility rate is the lowest in the world.”
The two population experts interviewed in this article by Voice of America, Lu Jiehua and Yi Fuxian, and the two reluctant women, Lu Xi and Zhang Nanfeng, all agree on one thing in the interview, and that is that once the fertility rate drops, it will never go back up. It’s easy for the government to control the fertility rate, but it’s hard to encourage it.
A young woman in Beijing, who did not want her real name on it, told VOA, “One seemingly viable way to deal with the fertility depression in China today is to produce a bunch of sweet little dramas with a warm realist tone like the popular TV series ‘Little Shedder. After all, many girls, including me, after watching the feeling is that, although there are a lot of anxiety and competition of the cruelty of fighting children, but also everywhere full of family affection, especially the warmth and beauty between mother and child, so that people can not help but want to try to avoid the embarrassment of the drama, trying to become a qualified modern mother.”
This may be more acceptable to women than the “family style” lecture and the development of “divorce calm law”.
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