China has tried everything to get its citizens to have more children and stop its population from shrinking, even declaring that having children is a patriotic act. However, its population declined for the third consecutive year.
Even an unexpected rise in the number of babies born for the first time in seven years will not reverse the trend of population aging and decline.
China is facing a long-term baby boom that is spreading throughout the economy. Hospitals are closing obstetrics units and companies that sell infant formula are idling factories. In 2023, thousands of kindergartens will close and more than 170,000 early childhood teachers will lose their jobs.
As one former kindergartener in the southern city of Chongqing put it, China’s birth rate “is falling sharply.” The latest data shows that the number of Chinese kindergarten enrollments will drop by more than 5 million in 2023.
On Friday, the Office for National Statistics reported that there were 9.54 million births last year, up slightly from 9.02 million in 2023. million – China’s population has shrunk for the third consecutive year.
Experts say the small increase in births is partly due to the fact that this is the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, but does not change the broader trajectory. China’s childbearing population is declining, and young people are reluctant to have children.
“In the medium to long term, the number of births every year in our country will continue to decline,” said Ren Yuan, a professor at the Institute of Population Research at Fudan University.
For three decades, the Chinese government has ruthlessly implemented the one-child policy to control population growth. Now, Chinese leaders have made reversing the ongoing decline in birth rates a top priority, a task that experts say few countries will be able to pull off successfully. China’s top leader Xi Jinping has called on officials to promote a “culture of marriage and childbirth”.
The lack of babies is exacerbating China’s economic challenges. A shrinking working-age population is putting pressure on underfunded pension systems, while an aging society relies on a crumbling health care system. China also reported on Friday that its economy would grow 5% in 2024, a figure that was in line with expectations but that many experts said did not fully reflect the crisis in confidence among households reeling from a years-long housing crisis.
To encourage people to have more children, authorities offer tax incentives, cheaper housing and cash. The city pledged to cover the costs of in vitro fertilization. In some parts of the country, they’ve even pledged to lift restrictions that penalize single mothers.
The government has called on local officials to set up early warning systems to monitor major changes in rural population across the country. Some officials even went door-to-door to ask women about their menstrual cycles.
Companies are also getting involved. In 2023, travel website Trip.com began paying employees nearly $1,400 per year per newborn until they are 5 years old. He will pay employees nearly $4,100.
“We want our employees to have more children,” founder He Xiaopeng said in a video posted on social media. “I think companies should manage the money so employees can have children.”
This problem is not unique to China, which in 2023 was overtaken by India to become the world’s most populous country. Falling birth rates are often a measure of a country’s move up the economic ladder, since fertility rates tend to fall as income and education rise. But China’s population suddenly declined much earlier than the government expected. Many families earn more than they did a decade ago but have lost income due to the housing crisis.
Officials have long feared a day when there wouldn’t be enough workers to feed retirees. Now governments have less time to prepare. In the next ten years, more than 400 million people will reach the age of 60.
China faces two challenges in this regard. Its public pension system is severely underfunded, with many young people unwilling or unable to contribute. A low retirement age makes the situation worse. After years of deliberation, the government has decided on a 15-year plan to gradually raise the official age to 63 for men, 58 for women in offices and 55 for women working in factories. The changes take effect this month.
The Communist Party only eased birth restrictions in 2015, allowing families to have two children, a relaxation that sparked a sudden boom. Because there are not enough beds, the hospital has to add beds in the corridors.
But the moment was short-lived. By 2017, the birth rate began to decline every year until last year.
In 2021, panicked officials once again relaxed China’s fertility policy, allowing couples to have three children. It’s too late. The next year, very few babies were born, and the population began to shrink for the first time since the Great Leap Forward.
China has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, well below what demographers say is the replacement rate required for population growth. This threshold requires an average of two children per couple.
Experts say the number of births is likely to continue to fluctuate.
“For a country with a population of 1.4 billion, an increase of 500,000 births is not a rebound at all,” said Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine. “That’s compared to the lowest year in 2023, when the pandemic certainly caused a pause in childbirth.”
Many young Chinese are quick to list reasons for not having children: the rising cost of education, the increasing burden of caring for aging parents and the desire to live a “dual-income, childless” lifestyle.
For women, this sentiment is especially strong. As the only children in the family, daughters have access to educational and employment opportunities that their parents typically do not. They grew up to be powerful women, but they felt that Xi Jinping’s call for them to fulfill their patriotic duties and have children went too far. Many of these women say entrenched inequality and inadequate legal protections discourage them from getting married.
The dramatic decline in the number of babies is having a huge impact on health care, education and even consumer markets. Companies that once catered to the baby boom by selling infant formula are now making shakes containing calcium and selenium for seniors with fragile bones.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, is closing a factory for the Chinese market that employs more than 500 people halfway around the world in Europe. The company will focus on selling high-quality baby products and expanding its adult nutritional product offerings in China, a spokesman said.
The pressure on China’s health care system is even more apparent. Dozens of hospitals and maternal health clinic chains have reportedly closed over the past two years.
On social media forums, nurses specializing in obstetrics have spoken out about low pay and unemployment. One doctor told state media that obstetrics, once considered a guaranteed “iron rice bowl” position, has now become a “rusty iron rice bowl.”
Han Zhonghou, a former official at a hospital in northern China, told a Chinese magazine that some smaller hospitals had stopped paying employees.
“The life in the maternal and child hospital is getting harder every year,” Mr. Han said.
