According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the current demographic trends of the Chinese Communist Party confirm that the family planning policy has left a demographic “time bomb” in China. The picture shows a newborn baby.
Chinese authorities released the latest census results on May 11. Xi Jinping has made no secret of his ambition to make China the dominant global power of the 21st century, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that day. But the census revealed a major question: What if China doesn’t have enough young people? The editorial also noted that the Communist Party’s current demographic trends confirm that the family planning policy has left a demographic “time bomb” in China.
The editorial is titled “Xi Jinping’s Achilles’ Heel. The editorial says that after some delays, the CCP has finally released the census results. While the population grew slightly in 2020, from 1.4 billion to 1.412 billion, the more striking fact is that China’s birth rate has fallen sharply and the working-age population has fallen more than expected.
China’s demographic outlook continues to look bleak as its women are having fewer children. The census results show that the percentage of people aged 60 or older increased to 18.7% (compared to 13.3% in 2010); China also saw its lowest annual number of births (12 million) since 1961.
The census results were originally scheduled to be released in April of this year, and the delayed release has sparked widespread speculation about poor census results.
Wa Ri: It may be too late to cancel population control policy
Beijing has seen this trend coming, according to an editorial in China Daily, which said that in 2016, the Communist Party relaxed its fertility policy and a Chinese couple was allowed to raise two children, overturning the one-child policy that had been in place for 35 years. Last month, the People’s Bank of China advised the Communist government that it needs to abandon its population control policies if it hopes to compete with the United States, but even that may be too late. Once fertility rates decline, the trend will be hard to reverse, no matter what incentives the government offers.
Many governments have tried, and some believe that Poland or Hungary (which now spends nearly 5 percent of its GDP to encourage its citizens to have more children) may have had results. But in general, these policies have either failed completely or, at best, have shown modest increases in fertility.
The one-child policy contributed to a mindset in which couples focused all their resources on one child, and many families felt they could not afford to raise a second child. The baby boom policymakers were expecting after the one-child policy was scrapped in 2016 did not happen.
In Shanghai, one mother-to-be said she wasn’t surprised by the official 11-day announcement of the numbers, Reuters said.
“I think it’s normal. Property prices are very high now and young people are under a lot of financial pressure. For us to have a child, we need a certain financial base before we consider it.” The mother-to-be said.
Aging problem will hinder Xi’s ambition for global domination
The social and economic impact of an aging population with a declining birth rate is enormous, affecting the growing demand for China’s already strained and underfunded health and pension programs, according to a China Daily editorial, which announced in March that the Communist government will gradually raise the current retirement age of 60. The cost of retirement is difficult in any country, but China has yet to achieve widespread prosperity beyond its coastal regions and major cities.
Other countries are also facing aging populations and declining total fertility rates, which are the average number of children per woman. The Japanese and Koreans are richer than the Chinese, but their total fertility rates are 1.36, 1.1 and 0.9, respectively. the overall rate in Europe is 1.522. the U.S. rate is 1.7, while China’s is 1.3.
This trend confirms that Beijing’s often brutal family planning interventions have left China with a demographic “time bomb,” according to the editorial.
Now, the editorial says, the demographic bill is coming. Xi may learn that the biggest obstacle to his ambition to replace the United States as a global leader comes not from abroad, but from the aging of China’s population, a legacy of his Communist predecessors.
In another report, China Daily said that China’s demographic situation has developed in a very short period of time to become a primary concern of the Chinese (Communist) government at the economic level. For several years now, it has been clear that there are fewer and fewer young people to replace the growing number of retirees, but the Communist government has largely delayed the issue because its leaders are busy dealing with other issues, such as rising debt, the U.S.-China trade war and reining in the once laissez-faire private sector. But now, a demographic crisis is looming. The “rust belt” of northeast China already has a pension shortfall.
According to official data, the working-age population has been declining since 2012. Communist Party leaders have long said that automation will help offset the decline in the working-age population. But economists have expressed skepticism about this strategy. In March, researchers at China’s central bank published a paper calling for a stronger response to China’s dire demographic situation. The paper said, “It is important to recognize that education and technological advances will hardly compensate for the decline in population.”
A BBC report described aging as like a chronic disease in an economy, with a smaller and smaller percentage of young adults working and a growing percentage of older people needing to be provided for by society as a whole, resulting in a widening pension gap and a heavy social burden. Young people are already having a hard time living on their own, so they are even more reluctant to have children, and coupled with the relative reluctance of the elderly to spend, the economy is less dynamic and society is caught in a vicious circle.
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