Reasons Behind & Implications of China’s Population Decline
Author: Kristi Ross
Editors: Mike Wu, George Hahn
The world’s most populous country has begun to shrink: China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported a decline in its population of nearly one million people in 2o22. This is the first year where China's birth rate was at a net negative since the Great Leap Forward: an economic experiment that resulted in widespread famine in the 1960s. There are three factors which contribute to China’s declining populations: lasting consequences of the one-child policy, changing attitudes towards marriage and childbirth, and the expenses associated with raising children.
The Chinese government instituted a variety of policies to curb its demographic decline. One of which was the country’s existing population controls: During the last thirty-five years, the one-child policy limited the number of children a couple could have. In 2015, the Chinese government amended the law allowing couples to have two children and in 2021, the government allowed individual families to have an additional child. In the same year, the government offered a wide variety of incentives including cash handouts, tax cuts, and property concessions. Despite these measures, China’s population has continued to fall. Living costs, namely rent prices, play a key role in a family’s decision to have less children. For many young couples in particular, student debt, fewer job opportunities, and growing competitiveness in the job market makes it not only difficult, but unappealing to raise children. The prospects of unpaid domestic labor, potential workplace discrimination, and an overall loss in independence has disincentivized many Chinese women from having children. Additionally, entrenched gender roles have yet to be challenged on a systemic level.
Now, China faces a demographic crisis: a declining population paired with an aging population, placing immense pressure on younger generations. By 2035, nearly one-third of the total population is expected to be elderly. Consequently, China’s shrinking working age population will make economic growth even more difficult. China’s social security system is expected to be strained, as a smaller portion of the country’s population is able to contribute to pension and health care funds, and the demand for these services increase. In order to combat the consequences of China’s shrinking population, the government has once again increased fertility. During the CPC’s 20th national congress in October, Xi Jinping had reiterated the importance of “improving the population development strategy and easing economic pressure on families'' in his speech. His speech had also marked the imperative of “pursuing a proactive national strategy” such as decreasing prices of maternal care, lowering costs of kindergarten admission, as well as enhancing elderly care programs in smaller cities/townships.
In conclusion, China's population drop was a multifaceted result of top-down policy making, unequal wealth development, rapidly rising living costs, and a stagnating society. A multi-decade-long birth control policy may have halted China's once-torrential population growth rate, but its real enduring consequences had just begun to reveal itself in front of a desperately developing, post covid China. In the coming years, CPC will face a continuously shrinking workforce paired with a growing elderly population. Thus, navigating population drop in the midst of nationwide industrial transformation (Made in China 2025), potential warfare in the Taiwan Strait, as well as an covid-torn economy will not be one of the easiest tasks Beijing shall tackle.
