China’s population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades, official data showed Tuesday, as the birth rate eased in the face of financial pressures and changing social attitudes.
The world’s most populous country is facing a demographic crisis due to an aging workforce, which analysts warn could hamper economic growth and pile pressure on strained public coffers.
China’s cost of living
Analysts point to the rising cost of living — as well as the growing number of women in the workforce and seeking higher education — as reasons for the slowdown.
“Who dares to have children?” Shanghai residents in their thirties said Tuesday.
“The unemployment rate is very high, Covid is destroying everything, there is nothing we can do. Next year we will grow again.
The population of mainland China will be around 1,411,750,000 by the end of 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year.
The number of births was 9.56 million, NBS said, while the number of deaths was 10.41 million.
China’s population finally fell in the early 1960s, when the country was battling the worst famine in modern history, as a result of Mao Zedong’s agricultural policy known as the Great Leap Forward.
China ended its strict one-child policy – imposed in the 1980s due to fears of overpopulation – in 2016 and will begin allowing couples to have three children in 2021.
But this has failed to reverse demographic decline for a country that has long relied on a large workforce as a driver of economic growth.
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“The population will tend to decline from here in the coming years,” said Zhiwei Zhang of Pinpoint Asset Management.
“China cannot rely on the demographic dividend as a structural driver for economic growth,” he said.
“Economic growth should depend more on productivity growth, driven by government policies.”
– ‘A lot of pressure’ –
The one-child policy means the Chinese are used to smaller families, Xiujian Peng, a researcher at Australia’s Victoria University, told AFP.
And for those who have only children as a result of the policy, “there is a lot of pressure when it comes to taking care of parents and improving the quality of life in the future”, a young woman in Beijing told AFP.
For those with children, balancing work and raising children can be an impossible task.
“For many women, having a child means giving up a lot of things they want,” said Nancy, a 32-year-old e-commerce worker.
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News of population decline is quickly trending on China’s heavily censored internet.
“Without children, countries and nations have no future,” one comment on the Twitter-like service Weibo read.
“Having children is also a social responsibility,” another comment from a well-known “patriotic” influencer read.
But others pointed to the difficulties of raising children in modern China.
“I love my mother, I will never be a mother,” said one.
“Nobody thinks why we don’t want to have (children) and don’t want to get married,” said another.
– ‘Policy package required’ –
Independent demographer He Yafu also pointed to “the decline in the number of women of childbearing age, which will decrease by five million per year between 2016 and 2021” – a result of population aging – as the reason for the low birth rate.
Many local authorities have launched measures to encourage couples to have children.
The southern megacity of Shenzhen, for example, now offers a birth bonus of up to 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) and pays benefits up to the age of three.
But analysts argue more needs to be done.
“A comprehensive policy package covering childbirth, parenting and education is needed to reduce the cost of raising children,” researcher Peng told AFP.
Also read: Elderly Covid patients fill hospital wards in major Chinese cities
“Women’s job insecurity after childbirth needs to be addressed in particular.”
The Chinese population may decline annually by an average of 1.1 percent, according to a study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences updated last year and shared with AFP.
China could have only 587 million people in 2100, less than half of today, according to the most pessimistic projection of the demographic team.
And India is set to dethrone China this year as the world’s most populous country, according to the United Nations.
“The shrinking and aging population will be a real concern for China,” Peng said.
“This will have a huge impact on China’s economy from now until 2100.”
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