A grandfather lifts his grandson after taking some family photos in Beijing / AP
BEIJING
China’s population declined last year for the first time in more than six decades, according to official figures released yesterday, pointing to a demographic crisis in the world’s most populous country.
“By the end of 2022, the national population was 1,411.75 million,” reported the National Bureau of Statistics (ONE) in Beijing, specifying that there was “a decrease of 0.85 million since the end of 2021.” The number of births was 9.56 million and 10.41 million deaths were registered.
The country’s birth rate has fallen to historic levels due to an aging population, an accelerating decline that analysts say could hurt economic growth and put pressure on public finances.
The last time China’s population declined was in 1960, when the country faced the worst famine in its modern history, caused by Mao Zedong’s agricultural policy called the Great Leap Forward.
China in 2016 lifted its strict one-child policy, imposed in the 1980s due to fears of overpopulation, and in 2021 began allowing couples to have three children.
But those authorizations failed to stem the demographic decline. “Who still dares to have children? The unemployment rate is high (among young people), Covid destroyed everything,” said a man in his 30s from Shanghai.
BONUSES FOR CHILDREN
“The population will surely continue to decline in the coming years,” said Zhiwei Zhang of Pinpoint Asset management. “China will not be able to depend on the demographic dividend as a structural driver of economic growth,” said the expert. “Economic growth will need to depend more on productivity growth, which is driven by government policies.”
News of the population decline quickly trended on Chinese social media, with some people expressing fear for the future of the country.
“Without children, the state and the nation have no future,” wrote a user of the social network Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.
Given these figures, many local authorities launched measures to encourage couples to have children. For example, the southern megacity of Shenzhen offers a birth bonus and a monthly allowance until the child turns three.
A couple having their first baby automatically receives 3,000 yuan ($444), and the figure rises to 10,000 yuan ($1,480) for the third child.
The eastern city of Jinan began paying a monthly allowance of 600 yuan for couples having a second child on Jan. 1.
“SMALL FAMILIES”
The Chinese population is also “getting used to small families because of decades of one-child policy,” said Xiujian Peng, a researcher at the University of Victoria, Australia. “The Chinese government must find effective policies to promote fertility, otherwise the fertility level will continue to fall,” she added.
The independent demographer He Yafu also points to the “decline in the number of women of childbearing age, which fell by five million per year between 2016 and 2021”, as a consequence of the aging of the population. China’s population could decline 1.1 percent on average annually, according to a study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Another reason that explains the declining birth rate in China is the difficulty in reconciling the demands of work with a good education for children, in an ultra-competitive society.
Beyond the “stimulus bonuses” to enlarge families, those who already have children explain that if they do not have more babies it is because of the difficulty of combining the mandates of a very demanding labor market with the ambition to give their offspring the best future.
“For many households it is extremely difficult to raise a child, and even that is not handled very well,” says Wenjing, a 40-year-old blogger, for whom government aid is “insubstantial.” “Many families suffered financially with the pandemic. And in those harsh circumstances, many people decided not to have any more children”, explains this woman.
Notable is the absence of breastfeeding spaces in most workplaces in China, and the impossibility for unmarried women to freeze their eggs.
A place at a private day care center can cost between 5,000 and 20,000 yuan ($740 and $2,940) a month in Beijing, according to the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Many urban youth also live far from their families in the extended sense, which deprives them of essential help from uncles or grandparents.
According to some projections, China could have fewer than 587 million people by the year 2100. Meanwhile, the UN says India could displace China as the world’s most populous country this year.
