China’s population shrinks for first time in over 60 years: Official data

[Dungeness]

It is not just the number of workers, but also the retirees per worker ratio that is important.

That's exactly what I was talking about. Postponing legal retirement age, thus turning "would-be retirees" into productive workers. Life expectancy of Americans and Chinese are roughly the same, but Chinese currently enjoy average 12 more years retirement life than their US counterpart.

 

[Mista]

Another important factor is the steep fall in childbearing age woman population.

Blue: Number of births.
Orange: Number of female births 25 years ago.

Note that the one-child policy was abolished in 2016, so there is a small uptick in births in 2016/2017 despite a decline in female births 25 years ago.

Blue, left axis: Woman population, aged 20-35 ('0,000)
Orange, right axis: Woman population, aged 25-30 ('0,000)

As we can see, the woman population aged 25-30 (orange) has fallen by ~40% (~75mil to ~45mil) from 2017 to 2022.

This explains why there is such a steep fall in births from 2017 to 2022.

Demographics of China - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Still, it's pretty shocking that births in China has fallen almost by half from 17.2mil to 9.5mil in the past 5 years.

 

[beijingwalker]

Congratulations China.

This is a great achievement.

China predicted and designed this fall of the population when she first started the one child policy 40 years ago and this result was what China wanted to achieve, it didn't happen until 40 years later today, but now we are no longer sure about if this is reallly what we want because people's perspectives on big population during the past 40 years have changed a lot.

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

China predicted and designed this fall of the population when she first started the one child policy 40 years ago and this result was what China wanted to achieve, it didn't happen until 40 years later today, but now we are no longer sure about if this is reallly what we want because people's perspectives on big population during the past 40 years have changed a lot.

Robots will be doing most of the work.

China is already a top robotic power.

You no longer need huge population.

 

[Mista]

Blue: Number of births.
Orange: Number of female births 25 years ago.

Note that the one-child policy was abolished in 2016, so there is a small uptick in births in 2016/2017 despite a decline in female births 25 years ago.

Blue, left axis: Woman population, aged 20-35 ('0,000)
Orange, right axis: Woman population, aged 25-30 ('0,000)

As we can see, the woman population aged 25-30 (orange) has fallen by ~40% (~75mil to ~45mil) from 2017 to 2022.

This explains why there is such a steep fall in births from 2017 to 2022.

Why is there such a steep fall in the number of childbearing age woman aged 25-30?

My own hypothesis: Other than the one-child policy in earlier decades and a falling TFR, a large factor is due to the Great Leap Forward which has led to widespread famine from 1959 to 1961. Births fell dramatically in those years, and child mortality was probably bad in those times as well.

As we can see from China's population pyramid, there is a big gap in population of those born from 1959 to 1961. Then there is a demographic echo resulting from that gap every ~20 years. Those in their 20s now are born in the second demographic echo which is probably a large reason why there is a steep fall in the number of childbearing age woman.

China is probably in the middle of the third demographic echo now.

 

[Nan Yang]

Every problem can be solved.

China announces new incentives for couples to have more children amid population decline​

China in the new guidelines offered perks like preferential housing for couples who give birth to more than one child and better maternity leave policies.​

Written by Apoorva Kaul

Image: AP/Unsplash

Amid the population crisis in the nation, China on Tuesday announced new guidelines to implement the support system aimed to motivate more couples to have babies. The Chinese administration in the new guidelines offered perks like preferential housing for couples who give birth to more than one child and better maternity leave policies, Global Times reported. Notably, China ended its one-child policy which allows couples to have just three babies.

17 Chinese government departments have issued guidelines to set up a fertility-friendly society and encourage couples to have more children. The guidelines released by the government departments include promoting prenatal and postnatal care, giving preferential housing facilities to couples giving birth to more than one baby, setting up nursing facilities, improving rules related to maternity leave and insurance, high-quality education resources and fertility-friendly employment environment.

According to a report by Global Times, Yang Wenzhuang, head of population and family affairs at the National Health Commission said China's population will experience a negative growth during the 14th Five-Year Plan period between 2021 to 2025. He made the remarks at the 2022 Annual Conference of the China Population Association. Chinese demographers have said that negative population growth will become a dominant trend in the next few years. The demographers stressed that improving the quality of the population and making changes to economic development plans are needed to address the issue.

Huang Wenzheng, a demography expert and senior researcher at the Center for China and Globalization, told the Global Times "it can be predicted that China's birth rate will continue to shrink for more than a century." Wenzheng added that the birth rate will continue to reduce in first-tier cities. According to the Global Times report in July, the birth rate for 2021 released by 29 provinces and regions in China indicated that the number of births in 2021 has reached the lowest in decades in several provinces. The top 10 provinces which have the most births include Hunan, Guizhou, Shandong, Sichuan, Hebei, Guizhou, Anhui, Guangdong, Henan, Guangxi and Jiangsu. As per the news report, Guangdong province has recorded more than 1 million new births. The number of births reported in Central China's Henan province has reduced below 5,00,000 for the first time in around six decades.

 

[beijingwalker]

The sillver bulllet willl be giving a free house to couples having more than two children, this will save the parents a whole life of hardwork, and they will be producing babies like there's no tomorrow, but it also risks of crashing Chinese real estate factor.

 

[Song Hong]

The sillver bulllet willl be giving a free house to couples having more than two children, this will save the parents a whole life of hardwork, and they will be producing babies like there's no tomorrow, but it also risks of crashing Chinese real estate factor.

There are more than enough house in China. The scarcity is Beijing inner 3rd ring.

Also in some cities such as Hegang, the property crash so badly -- because the rural housing by SOE army farm is so good that no one want to live in cities.

 

[ThunderCat]

How China had so many people in the first place:

 

[GiantPanda]

It is a matter of getting rich. It happened across East Asia. China is the latest to hit this trend after Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

China with its form of government can dictate a certain of amount of incentives (like giving away homes to people with multiple children and crashing market) that the other East Asian (or European for that matter) won't. History doesn't stop now.

 

[Song Hong]

East Asian elites need to solve the problem that you cannot both put people into rat race and have replacement fertility.

You can introduce fundamental Islam and get higher fertility but I guess no East Asian society wants that. It brings intellectual development back to medieval age. Even when Islam starts modernize such as Iran, fertility goes down.

Or you can bring in lots of blacks that like to fk around. But then black fking culture and violence go hand in hand. A society that hyper fk often have high micro violence, manifest in gangster war, homicide rate.

 

[GiantPanda]

It is housing, childcare and education. This is well known globally. The issue is actually easier to solve than getting 800M people (with a crushingly high birthrate) out of poverty in the 1980s.

Once China decides to provide subsidized housing for families with children, subsidize their care (make use of retirees) and provide subsidized tertiary education then birthrates will pick up again. It will take money but it is a far easier problem to solve with a 1.4B population with still a lot of workers and a far wealthier economy in the 2020s.

I fully expect China solve this just like it solved the opposite and poverty forty years ago. Things looked far more dired then and nobody expect China to see this day when it is wealthy and suffering from one of the developed nation diseases.

 

[REhorror]

East Asian elites need to solve the problem that you cannot both put people into rat race and have replacement fertility.

You can introduce fundamental Islam and get higher fertility but I guess no East Asian society wants that. It brings intellectual development back to medieval age. Even when Islam starts modernize such as Iran, fertility goes down.

Or you can bring in lots of blacks that like to fk around. But then black fking culture and violence go hand in hand. A society that hyper fk often have high micro violence, manifest in gangster war, homicide rate.

Don't think the issue is religion, even Saudi Arabia and India are having decreasing birthrate.

The issue is space, bring too much people together and they will refuse to breed due to no privacy.

There's also so much shit to waste time on (games, music, movies, etc). Back then a peasant only has to work and f*ck his wife at night.