Opinion | Why China faces a long struggle to arrest its population decline
- By every yardstick, China is walking into a textbook demographic crisis of falling birth rates, a shrinking labour force, and ballooning numbers of pensioners
- Once the country’s population starts to decline – which is likely to happen in 2022 – it will be extremely difficult to reverse the trend
Just one line in President Xi Jinping’s speech to the 20th party congress on Sunday was about population – saying that China has to “optimise its population strategy and develop a birth support system” – but it was the first unambiguous pro-birth message from the ruling Communist Party’s half-decade conference.
After four decades of birth control – starting when the 12th party congress in 1982 enshrined “family planning” as “basic state policy” – China has finally woken up and realised that it may have gone too far and for too long when it comes to intervening in birth control.
By every yardstick, China is walking into a textbook demographic crisis of falling birth rates, a shrinking labour force, and ballooning numbers of pensioners. Its U-turn in population policy has come too late.
Only eight years ago, China’s most famous film director Zhang Yimou was fined US$1.2 million for having three kids. Yet today, local governments are scrambling to reward people for having more babies. Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, has promised to give 10,000 yuan (US$1,390) in cash for the third child of every couple.
