The Chinese Communist Party launched a comprehensive two-child policy on New Year’s Day 2016 in hopes of a baby boom, but it was not to be. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 15.23 million people were born in the year 2018, also 2 million fewer than in 2017. (Screenshot from the video)
China’s birth population has plummeted in recent years. Reuters said the top brass of the Communist Party of China is working on a program to encourage births by, among other things, easing the economic burden, and could fully liberalize the birth policy in the next three to five years, but is concerned that this could unbalance urban and rural fertility rates and increase pressure on poverty and employment.
Data from the seventh national census recently released by the Communist Party’s National Bureau of Statistics shows that China’s total population reached 1.41 billion in 2020. However, a report previously released by the CCP’s Ministry of Public Security revealed that only 10.035 million newborns will be registered with public security organs in 2020.
China’s population growth rate between 2010 and 2020 has fallen to its lowest level since the 1950s.
Since the late 1970s, the Chinese Communist Party has implemented a draconian one-child policy that has resulted in forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and fines for over-births throughout the country, which has wreaked havoc on hundreds of millions of Chinese, especially women, and caused the deaths of at least 400 million babies, as well as a declining fertility rate and a severely aging population.
In recent years, the Beijing authorities have repeatedly relaxed the fertility policy, including the opening of the “comprehensive two-child” policy in 2016, but with little success. 17.86 million births in 2016, 17.23 million in 2017, 15.23 million in 2018, and 14.65 million in 2019. The number of births in 2020 will be only 10.035 million.
Recently, Reuters quoted sources involved in the CCP policy discussions as saying that top CCP leaders are working on a comprehensive plan to address the demographic challenge. The plan includes not only lifting birth restrictions, but also easing the financial burden on couples to encourage childbearing.
The sources expect that the CCP will encourage childbearing under the current policy framework and fully liberalize birth control in the next three to five years. However, the removal of fertility restrictions may have unintended consequences. Urban residents will have limited impact from the policy change due to the high cost of living; however, rural residents will be more willing to have children, and the size of rural families may expand rapidly as a result, increasing poverty and employment pressure.
Sources who requested anonymity were also involved in the policy discussions, but not in the final decision, the report said.
Liang Jianzhang, a Chinese population economist and professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, suggested in an online reading of the seventh national census data on Nov. 11 that to solve the demographic crisis, parents could be rewarded with 1 million yuan for each family that has one child.
He said, “Giving 1 million yuan for having a baby may sound like too much at first, but if you discuss this with young couples, you will know that it is actually not much at all. Because the direct cost of raising a child from birth to college graduation in a big city is much more than that. And that number will rise in the future as housing prices and education costs rise.”
Liang suggested spending 10 trillion yuan a year in fiscal spending to raise the fertility rate, which, if calculated on the basis that China needs to have 10 million more children a year, would require an incentive of almost 1 million yuan per child.
Liang also wrote on Feb. 1 that China’s population collapse has arrived and that this decline will not bottom out if the fertility rate cannot be raised significantly.
He said that while the number of births in 2020 will be the smallest in recent decades, it will likely be the largest in the coming decades, with China’s future annual births sliding sharply toward 10 million or less. This slide will not bottom out if the fertility rate cannot be raised significantly.
At the time, he also proposed that reversing the low-fertility trend would begin with a shift in fertility policy, lowering housing costs, and reducing tax rates in order to fundamentally boost fertility.
The Communist Party’s central bank acknowledged in a working paper in April that China’s demographic situation is reversing and that the population will decay faster than imagined, thus suggesting that full liberalization and encouragement of fertility should not be hesitated to wait and see.
The paper also said that China should learn from the “lost 20 years” of Japan. Demographic changes may lead to economic stagnation, declining savings rates and asset price deflation, but the current annuity system is not ready for an aging population.
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