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China’s drop in population is nothing to worry about – just look at history
Published: 7:45am, 2 Jun, 2023
Primary school students salute the national flag in Yantai, in China’s Shandong Province. China has recently reported a drop in its population for the first time since the 1960s. Photo: Getty Images
The persistently low birth rates in some Asian countries have prompted their governments to spend profligate amounts of money to reverse the trend.
South Korea has spent more than US$200 billion over the past 16 years to boost its population, while Japan has pledged to set aside US$150 billion of the country’s budget for child-related policies.
China, which has just been overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation, saw its population slip to 1.41175 billion at the end of 2022 from 1.41260 billion a year earlier. The last time the country recorded negative population growth was in the 1960s.
I’ve never had any desire to be a parent, and I’m glad I live in a society where voluntary childlessness isn’t seen as a moral defect.
Personal disinclinations aside, I’m not sure I want to bring a child into an overpopulated world of environmental degradation and depleted resources, where bellicose nations with extinction-level weapons threaten the human race with yet another world war.
Continuing the family line and leaving my genetic legacy to future generations isn’t all that important to me. Each of us have four biological grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents … going back a few hundred years you’ll have thousands of ancestors.
A few thousand years more, and you’ll find that we are all related. I don’t think my DNA is so important to the human gene pool that I simply must pass it on.
So why do governments encourage citizens to have more babies? In the simplest terms, a bigger population with more working-age people to produce more goods and services leads to higher economic growth.
Conversely, a low birth rate means a country’s workforce gets smaller, and the cost of looking after the ageing, non-working population increases.
For the Chinese government, economic performance is of vital importance. It therefore comes as no surprise that it has taken measures to stem the low birth rate.
As early as 2016, it abolished the one-child policy, in place since 1980, partly to balance China’s female-to-male sex ratio. In May 2021, the government even eased restrictions to allow women to have up to three children.
China has always had a large number of people that accounted for a sizeable proportion of the human population – 25–30 per cent of the world’s total in any given time.
The first census was recorded to have occurred around 2,800 years ago, but no extant data exist. Available census records of successive dynasties in the imperial period (221BC – 1912) show that in the 1,800 years between the Western Han (202BC – AD8) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties, China’s population had remained relatively stable at around 50 million people.
The country’s population saw a sudden, twofold increase in the late Ming dynasty, breaching the 100-million mark in the late 16th century. Explanations for this exponential growth range from improved methods of census taking to the introduction to China of high-yield crops from the Americas by the Portuguese and Spaniards around that period.
The population continued to grow in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), reaching a peak of 430 million in 1850. The 20th century was a century of rapid growth. In 1982, China’s population reached 1 billion for the first time.
The above numbers belie the multiple periods in China’s past when its population decreased because of wars, famines and pestilence.
The fall in numbers could be shocking – for example, 430 million in 1850 to 341 million in 1912, a loss of 89 million people in six decades due to cataclysmic events such as the Taiping Rebellion. But as we see, the numbers always bounced back strongly.
While I don’t believe that population and economic growth should be pursued at all cost, history suggests that China doesn’t have to worry too much about its population trajectory.
www.scmp.com
Why China shouldn’t worry about its first population drop in decades: it has fallen much further before, and always bounced back
- China’s population fell in 2022 for the first time since the 1960s, and while more people means a larger workforce and GDP, the Chinese shouldn’t be too anxious
- War, famine and disease have caused millions of deaths in recent Chinese history, but the population as always bounced back and gone on to grow further
Published: 7:45am, 2 Jun, 2023
Primary school students salute the national flag in Yantai, in China’s Shandong Province. China has recently reported a drop in its population for the first time since the 1960s. Photo: Getty Images
The persistently low birth rates in some Asian countries have prompted their governments to spend profligate amounts of money to reverse the trend.
South Korea has spent more than US$200 billion over the past 16 years to boost its population, while Japan has pledged to set aside US$150 billion of the country’s budget for child-related policies.
China, which has just been overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation, saw its population slip to 1.41175 billion at the end of 2022 from 1.41260 billion a year earlier. The last time the country recorded negative population growth was in the 1960s.
I’ve never had any desire to be a parent, and I’m glad I live in a society where voluntary childlessness isn’t seen as a moral defect.
Personal disinclinations aside, I’m not sure I want to bring a child into an overpopulated world of environmental degradation and depleted resources, where bellicose nations with extinction-level weapons threaten the human race with yet another world war.
Continuing the family line and leaving my genetic legacy to future generations isn’t all that important to me. Each of us have four biological grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents … going back a few hundred years you’ll have thousands of ancestors.
A few thousand years more, and you’ll find that we are all related. I don’t think my DNA is so important to the human gene pool that I simply must pass it on.
So why do governments encourage citizens to have more babies? In the simplest terms, a bigger population with more working-age people to produce more goods and services leads to higher economic growth.
Conversely, a low birth rate means a country’s workforce gets smaller, and the cost of looking after the ageing, non-working population increases.
For the Chinese government, economic performance is of vital importance. It therefore comes as no surprise that it has taken measures to stem the low birth rate.
As early as 2016, it abolished the one-child policy, in place since 1980, partly to balance China’s female-to-male sex ratio. In May 2021, the government even eased restrictions to allow women to have up to three children.
China has always had a large number of people that accounted for a sizeable proportion of the human population – 25–30 per cent of the world’s total in any given time.
The first census was recorded to have occurred around 2,800 years ago, but no extant data exist. Available census records of successive dynasties in the imperial period (221BC – 1912) show that in the 1,800 years between the Western Han (202BC – AD8) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties, China’s population had remained relatively stable at around 50 million people.
The country’s population saw a sudden, twofold increase in the late Ming dynasty, breaching the 100-million mark in the late 16th century. Explanations for this exponential growth range from improved methods of census taking to the introduction to China of high-yield crops from the Americas by the Portuguese and Spaniards around that period.
The population continued to grow in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), reaching a peak of 430 million in 1850. The 20th century was a century of rapid growth. In 1982, China’s population reached 1 billion for the first time.
The above numbers belie the multiple periods in China’s past when its population decreased because of wars, famines and pestilence.
The fall in numbers could be shocking – for example, 430 million in 1850 to 341 million in 1912, a loss of 89 million people in six decades due to cataclysmic events such as the Taiping Rebellion. But as we see, the numbers always bounced back strongly.
While I don’t believe that population and economic growth should be pursued at all cost, history suggests that China doesn’t have to worry too much about its population trajectory.
China’s drop in population is nothing to worry about – just look at history
China’s population fell in 2022 for the first time in decades, and although that may not bode well in the short term, a historical trend of growth despite famines and war should offer hope.
www.scmp.com
