The accelerated demographic crisis in East Asia is reluctant to marry and have no children, and the

Fertility rates are falling again and again in a growing number of countries, and the planet's population is growing more slowly.

As the three most important economies in the East Asian continent, China, Japan and South Korea have always attracted much attention. In addition to the economic miracle that has attracted worldwide attention, the deepening demographic crisis is also the number one problem facing these three East Asian countries.

Whether it is Japan's low-desire society of "male and female insulation", South Korea's "incurable" negative population growth, or China's increasingly obvious fertility decline, all show that the three East Asian countries are facing the serious problem of low fertility.

Why is it not the fertility rate that accompanies the improvement of material living conditions, but the willingness to have children?

What is the cause of East Asia's demographic dilemma?

As neighbors across the sea since ancient times, China, Japan and South Korea have been linked by each otherQuite closelyThere are many similarities in culture, customs, etc., which naturally includes the concept of childbearing.

The long-term agrarian society has made the three countries basically uphold the concept of "multiple births" and "multiple births" in history.

During the Korean Dynasty, the population approaching 20 million once made the per capita arable land on the Korean Peninsula less than 012 hectares; In the 16th century, the population of Japan during the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era also exceeded 10 millionSecond only to the Ming Dynasty and India in the same period.

Whether it is the proportion of population growth that occupies half of the world in the Tang and Song dynasties, or the population of 20,000 in the heyday of the Ming Dynasty, China has shown its important position in the population growth of East Asia and even the world.

In modern times, after the devastating population of World War II, China, Japan and South Korea once again experienced a wave of unprecedented prosperity in population growth, and during this time in the 20th century, it was not uncommon for a couple to have a group of children under their knees.

In order to limit such a majestic rate of population growth, the three countries at one time introduced a number of birth restriction regulations.

However, at that time, the population growth of "thriving people" was like an old dream that was difficult to reproduce, and today's three East Asian countries have inevitably slipped into the dilemma of rapid population growth, and even crisis.

What is the current level of fertility in China, Japan and South Korea?

Let's take a clockwise spin from the southern part of the Korean Peninsula to understand the current state of population growth in China, Japan, and South Korea.

The first is that we have already stepped in".Societies with negative population growthSouth Korea.

According to data released by South Korea** in August 2022, South Korea's total fertility rate for the whole of 2021 fell below 081, down 003%, which has been the "bottom" in the world for many years. The number of newborns in South Korea decreased by 4 percent year-on-year in 20213% to 26060,000, also a record low.

This corner of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula is becoming more and more empty.

The National Research Center for South Korea's population simulation, based on the country's population growth rate, is pessimistic: if the current fertility rate is maintained, South Korea's population will be halved and halved in half a century. At most, by 2750, the "last Korean" will usher in the end of life, and at the same time, South Korea will be officially removed from the planet.

He is already old, and he knows that the end is coming, but what he prays for is not to let him live longer, but to hope that he can die in the middle of the night, so that he can "turn off the last light" for South Korea.

If South Korea's sorrow is a "fading out" fate, Japan's demographic crisis is even more playful: the Japanese are running counter to childbearing, marriage, and even alienation.

According to Japan's latest disclosure,Seventy percent of Japanese men in their 20s and 30s do not have a spouse or a romantic partner, while40% of men don't even have dating experience.

Not to mention dating, falling in love and even getting married. And also in the recent statistics released by Japan**, showing that more than 10 million Japanese women choose to remain single,".Don't fall in love, don't get marriedIt seems to have become a popular concept among Japanese women today.

Many Japanese men are even more directly "rotten", leaving their bodies and minds in the two-dimensional virtual, even if they are young, they do not have the slightest intention of starting a family, and many Japanese women are also afraid and afraid of married life.

Even the law of opposites attracts has lost its foothold in this land, so getting married, having children, and continuing offspring has undoubtedly become nonsense.

According to the data recently disclosed by Japan**,Japan's fertility rate in 2021 was 126, although barely above the "death cross", there are still signs of continued decline.

According to **, if Japan's fertility situation continues to deteriorate, the country's population will shrink by at least 30 million by mid-century. Compared with Japan and South Korea, China's demographic changes are more rapid and profound.

Since 2018, China's population growth rate has shown an obvious cliff**, and on January 17, 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics released the statistics of the seventh population census: the national population at the end of 2022 was 141.1 billion people, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year, and the natural population growth rate was -060%, officially entering the negative growth range.

Chinese population ** trend chart.

It can be said that with such a huge population base, it still enters the ranks of negative population growth, which means that China's population structure is facing "great changes unseen in a century".

If the current trend of population growth rate is declining, China's population will shrink by 500 million in half a century, and in 80 years, it will shrink to half of the current 1.4 billion - 700 million.

The data is cold, but we might as well imagine that when half of your classmates, neighbors, and friends around you have disappeared out of thin air, and half of the bustling crowds on the streets have been lost, how much loneliness and loneliness should be filled in this vast land of 9.6 million square kilometers?

Why, then, did East Asian countries, which have always attached great importance to fertility based on agriculture, fall into the trap of low fertility after their economic take-off?

As the three major economies in East Asia, China, Japan and South Korea have witnessed the miracle of economic development.

Whether it is the "post-war miracle" created by Japan after the war, the "Han River miracle" that enabled South Korea's economy to take off, or the "miracle of reform and opening up" in China, which has attracted worldwide attention, the three East Asian countries have proved their vigorous economic development vitality with practical actions.

The development of the economy brings the most intuitive feeling not only to the rows of high-rise buildings, but also to the rise in prices visibly to the naked eye. In all aspects of clothing, food, housing and transportation, any country in China, South Korea and Japan can clearly experience the cost of living is not what it used to be.

The increase in the cost of living has a huge impact on the willingness to have children.

The immeasurable cost of childcare has become a lofty mountain in front of every school-age youth, which is a lot of expenses during the pregnancy preparation period, and long-term and high childcare expenses such as children's tuition fees and interest classes in the distance.

Therefore, when it comes to the topic of having children, the most direct emotional expressions of young people are:"No money".It is not easy to find a suitable place to live in a city where every inch of land is valuable, let alone buy a house and start a family.

The average house price in Seoul has exceeded 140,000 won per square meter, while the median annual income in South Korea is 150,000 won.

Yoo Young-yi, a female white-collar worker in an urban South Korea, originally wanted a child very much after marrying her husband, but when she went to work one day, she found that her female colleague was hiding in the toilet and whispered ** to ask about the status of the child at home.

She realized that once she had a child, she was destined to not be able to focus on work, which would affect her future, so she gradually dispelled the idea of having a child.

A highly developed economy and society not only means abundant material living conditions, but also fierce and cruel social competition.

Everyone knows that a rich life is beautiful, and everyone wants to be one in ten thousand, the lucky winner who spends a lot of money, but the competition is always "more monks and less porridge", and if you want to pass the single-plank bridge, you have to kick down all the opponents who stand in the way.

In South Korea, students of no mathematics have been studying for years just to get a way to it."Castle in the Sky".of the pass. The so-called "Castle in the Sky" refers to Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University.

Together, their school initials make up the ".sky”, which not only symbolizes its high-end education level and high social recognition, but also implies that it is "difficult to enter these institutions".

Castle in the Sky 1

This competitive atmosphere requires everyone who is in the middle of it and wants to stand to the end must devote themselves to it, and if they are not careful, they will lose everything.

There has long been a saying circulating on the Internet: ".The first sword on the shore, the first to kill the person you like".。ridiculed the helplessness of having no time to take into account personal demands such as children's affection in the involution environment.

Under this trend, "lying flat" has even become an attitude that many young people avoid life.

For example, some Japanese men who are currently dubbed "Heisei abandoned houses" have no intention of participating in the fierce competition of involution, and they enclose themselves in a corner of space all day long, cutting off almost all interpersonal interactions, and placing their emotions in the virtual.

Contacting the opposite sex and expressing affection were originally genes rooted in human blood, but the modern society that advertises civilization has become a barrier to love, which can not help but make people feel embarrassed.

The superposition of soaring prices, the cost of living, and the social status quo of involution have collectively woven the intractable disease of "infertility", which plagues the whole country.

If the irreconcilable contradiction between developed social economy and involution competition is the biggest obstacle to the increase of fertility, then the change in the concept of marriage and childbearing can be said to be the driving force behind the strengthening of this obstacle.

From a set of changes in the slogan of fertility in modern Korea, we can get a glimpse of the leopard and gain insight into the huge impact of the change of perception on fertility.

In 1966, the slogan of Koreans about having children was:"Before the age of 35, the interval between the birth of three children is three years";

The year 1971 was:"Don't treat daughters and sons differently, give birth to only two, and raise them well";

The year 1980 was:"As long as you have one daughter, you don't have to covet ten sons."

Since the beginning of the new century, South Korea's population growth has encountered a cliff**, in order to encourage national fertility, in 2010, South Korea put forward a new slogan "a child is lonely, the best gift for children is a younger sibling", but the once high fertility rate is gone.

Since ancient times, Japanese society has believed that children are treasures that are better than all things.

In the tanka of Manyoshu Yamagami Yiliang, it was written that "a treasure that can beat gold, silver, and jade is a child", and there is a saying in folklore that "children are gods until the age of seven."

Japan's Population Trend**.

After World War II, Japan, as a defeated country, was faced with a situation in which people's livelihoods were withering and everything was in ruins, and the protracted war consumed a large number of adult male populations in the country. In order to quickly restore the population, Japan** has even promulgated the ".Outline of the Population PolicyIt brought the legal age of marriage for Japanese women to 13 at that time.

The tradition of emphasizing childbearing, coupled with policies to encourage childbearing, led to a period of rapid population growth in Japan after the war. However, with the subsequent economic development and changes in the concept of childbearing, Japan still inevitably fell into the "low fertility trap".

In the traditional concept of Chinese childbearing, it is the responsibility of being born to have children and passing on the ancestry, and the dregs of the idea of "no filial piety has three, and no queen is greater" has existed for a long time as a feudal shackle that binds women.

Since the founding of New China, although these feudal ideas have been criticized and abandoned, having children has long been regarded as a "necessary thing in life" in the Chinese concept, and is regarded as the bottom line of maintaining Chinese family ethics and interpersonal and social relations.

With the improvement of women's social status and the increase of women's roles in the social division of labor, as well as the introduction of the Western concept of "Dink" family, similar to Japanese and Korean women, more and more Chinese women have also chosen to embark on the road of "Dink".

They believe that even if they don't have children, they can have a full life.

In the midst of similar social and historical backgrounds and changes in concepts, women in the three East Asian countries have awakened to their self-consciousness, and they are no longer willing to be confined to the framework of their husbands and children, or embrace love, or be alone, and embrace their vision of life.

Women are not the only protagonists in this ideological changeMany men are also beginning to take a hard look at how important marriage and childbearing are to their lives.

Kim Young-jong, 32, is a white-collar worker working in Seoul. Even though he has a relatively stable job, he still puts the goal of "getting married and having children" in the year of no doubt.

Even so, among the many friends around him, he is one of the few people who have the concept of "having children", most of his friends have no interest or plan to have children, even if they enter marriage, they will only unswervingly maintain their "Dink" status, and having children will only disrupt their original life plans.

It doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman. At a time when the concept of "sterility" is becoming more and more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, what we should be looking for isThe intersection of individual destiny and the continuation of human civilization.

Perhaps the concept of "encouraging multiple births" is not fully in line with the complex social conditions of the three East Asian countries, but the concept of "not marrying and having children" in the style of "beating to death with a stick" is obviously not in line with the actual needs of the continuation of human civilization.

How to find the balance between "birth" and "non-birth", and how to stimulate fertility without giving it all is a topic of the times that everyone who is in the historical tide of the population crisis should ponder.

In the face of the population crisis of "no marriage and no child", China, Japan and South Korea still need to find effective ways to break the situation.