China’s leaders have long known that the country is approaching a demographic crossroads. Policymakers have warned that China must prepare for a shrinking population and an era of fewer workers and more retirees. State media have urged young couples to seize the chance to have two or three children under relaxed family size rules, to ease the impending economic crisis.
However, a new sense of crisis began to grow on Tuesday, when the government confirmed that the nation last year’s population fell for the first time in six decadesearlier and more intense than predicted by many experts.
Even as Chinese officials have warned that a demographic Rubicon is approaching, their preparations have not kept up with the long-term needs of an aging society, in the eyes of many experts and citizens. China.
China’s sudden abandonment of “Covid-free” controls has exposed a government that is unprepared for an outbreak of infections. And, similarly, rising population pressures may indicate a government has not done enough to avoid difficult choices in the coming decades over rival priorities. Between the need to care for young and old. Between paying for social welfare and building China’s technological and military might.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has somewhat sought to address long-term economic and social pressures from an aging and shrinking society by lifting limits on size. family. He has taken steps to build a strong social safety net and proclaimed a new phase of “high-quality” growth that is less dependent on an abundant, cheap immigrant labor force from agriculture. village.
“Population is the most important issue for the future but the one that is most easily overlooked,” said Ren Zeping, a former chief economist at Evergrande Group, a major housing developer, who Research on the impending demographic crisis, said. wrote in a widely circulated comment after the figures were released on Tuesday. Ren called for stronger policymaking, including stricter maternity leave, maternity leave and parental care, and improved protection of women’s rights in the workplace.
After the latest census figures were released, many commented in social media posts and in interviews that the government’s moves might be too little and too late. . For many, the government has barely begun to address the deeper reasons why so many young couples choose to have one or no children at all, such as the cost of raising and educating children as well as children. lack of significant government support, especially for women, at home and in society. Workplace.
“I want to have children, but life pressure is too great,” Wu Yilan, a 34-year-old shop owner in Beijing, said in a phone interview. She said she discussed it with an ex-boyfriend. “If I were to settle down with a partner, I would probably think that one child would be enough.”
Anxiety and controversy about China’s new demographic era have grown as the birth rate has declined, especially in recent years. Now it has reached a turning point: China’s population in 2022 has dropped by 850,000, with more deaths than births for the first time since the famine of the early 1960s due to China’s disastrous social experiment. Mao Zedong, Great Leap Forward.
Demographers, economists and Chinese business leaders have come up with a number of ideas to support the growing number of elderly people and encourage couples to have more children. In 2016, the government loosened “one child” policy has been in place for more than three decades, allowing families with two children. In 2021, it increase limit To three.
Even so, most couples still try to have one child, while two children are common in the countryside. Many young people, especially women, remain skeptical that the government will make it easier for them to have children while continuing to enter the formal labor force.
Jennie Liu, a 32-year-old podcast platform manager in Shanghai, says she and her boyfriend have agreed that they want to raise a child or two – but only if they can “run,” a buzzword of China to move abroad.
“If we can run to somewhere with better welfare and an improved overall social environment, where a child can get residency status, then we can think of having child,” she said. In China, “an aging population and a decline in the working-age population will inevitably put pressure on government finances.”
Social issues run deep. After the release of the data on Tuesday, some Chinese online said that despite the government’s promises of a fairer deal for women, many employers are reluctant to hire women in public jobs. better, more stable jobs, because they don’t want to have to deal with maternity leave and childcare.
“In the job market, they worry that if you’re 23-30, you’ll get married and have kids, that if you’re 30-35, you’ll have a second or third child, and if you’re over 35, age is a pity” read a comment. “This kind of social setting is already the best form of contraception. All those policies that encourage birth and open doors will be for nothing.”
Yige Dong said the measures advocated by Chinese policymakers often overlook the greater pressures on women, especially those from rural and working-class backgrounds, that force them to suffer the painful bond between family and work. an associate professor of sociology at the University of Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system.
Families face tremendous pressure to get their children into better schools, with much of the burden falling on mothers, who often have to take care of elderly parents and parents-in-law.
“They are caught between the need to go to work and the need to raise their children intensively,” Ms. Dong said, citing Interviewing female migrant workers in central China.
“On the one hand, China is talking about this as a crisis caused by the falling birth rate, and on the other hand, they are oppressing women’s rights,” she said in a phone interview. “Given those two opposites, how can you convince the next generation of young women — those with their own aspirations — to get married?”
An aging, shrinking society is not unique to China, even in Asia, and the effects will last for decades. Even so, China’s heavy restrictions on family size over the past decades mean the country is facing these pressures in its economic takeoff much earlier than Japan. Korean version.
Economic and demographic pressures will erode China’s power in the coming decades and could encourage leaders, said Michael Beckley, an associate professor at Tufts University and co-author of the study. countries become more aggressive before they feel their national power diminishing. Danger Zone: Coming Conflict with ChinaA new book spawns this argument.
“China’s proposed demographic reforms are the last straw. They are overwhelmed by the fact that China will lose between 5 and 10 million working-age adults and add another 5 to 10 million elderly people each year in the near future,” said Professor Beckley. in the email answer the questions. “You can’t make up for that demographic crunch just by raising the retirement age.”
Other scholars have rejected Professor Beckley’s prediction of China’s demographic decline in power. They note that China can combat population pressure by providing better training for workers, improving their productivity, and by increasing innovation and automation in industries.
But few disagree that such changes would require China’s leaders to commit to more spending, who also want to invest heavily in military modernization, technological advancement and internal security. set.
Mr. Xi is not blind to these challenges. Beijing has introduced policies to encourage the expansion of aged care and promised more social support for women who want to have children. As people have repeatedly expressed anger at sexual harassment at universities, companies and media outlets, the government has also promised to crack down.
While Mr. Xi supports gender equality and repeats Mao’s maxim that “women lift half the sky”, he also encourages respect for traditional roles in the family.
“A lot of women have to dedicate themselves to taking care of the elderly and raising children, educating their children and playing a role in building the family structure,” he said. in 2013.
Ms. Dong, a professor from the University of Buffalo, said treating China’s population pressures as a matter of attitudes of young women would distract from the deeper social and economic pressures facing them.
“It’s a political issue, not a social engineering question,” she said. “The blame is on families and individuals, especially young women who don’t want to get married, but they don’t talk about the role of the state and its policies.”
