Earlier this month, the National Bureau of Statistics said the Chinese population at the end of 2023 was 14096.7 billion people, a decrease of 2.08 million from the previous year.
This is not the first time that the Chinese population has shrunk in recent years, with the population falling by 850,000 year-on-year in 2022, the first negative growth since the Great Famine of the 1960s.
The further expansion of the contraction to 2.08 million in 2023 has attracted widespread attention, on the one hand, due to a further decrease in the number of births to 9.02 million (540,000 fewer than in 2022) and a further increase in the number of deaths to 11.1 million (690,000 more than in 2022).
But the rapid decline in births has sparked a lot of discussion, such as will the population continue to shrink at an accelerated rate? What are the economic consequences? What can be done to save fertility?
Will the Chinese population shrink here?
If you stretch the timeline a little longer, the downward trend is almost precipitous – just seven years later, the number of annual births in China has more than halved – 18.83 million births in 2016, compared to 9.02 million in 2023.
This is not surprising. Bestu, a population policy expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that China has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, so it is inevitable that the population will stop growing and begin to decline.
Bestu believes that it has now entered a stagnation or decline track, and this year is only the second year of the "new era", but this does not mean that the Chinese population will only fall but not rise.
Su Yue, chief China economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), analyzed that the continuous decline in newborns is caused by the new crown epidemic, which has had an impact on both birth rates and mortality rates.
Given that nearly two-thirds of the babies born this year were conceived in 2022, the agency expects the newborn birth rate to pick up in 2024, driven by pent-up demand. This has the potential to drive positive population growth again.
After a brief occurrence in 2024 and possibly 2025, the number of newborns is expected to return to its previous downward trend due to a decrease in the number of women of childbearing age and a decline in fertility. While we don't expect China to face a "baby crisis" similar to South Korea's, it will be a challenge for China to maintain a stable, albeit low, fertility rate (comparable to Japan's), Su said.
Yi Fuxian, a senior researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the number of marriages in the first three quarters of 2023 increased by 4 due to the abandonment of the zero-COVID policy5%, plus 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, China's official birth figures are expected to reach around 9.3 million in 2024, but the number of births in 2025 will drop significantly.
In the long run, the ** of the Chinese population is still declining.
According to the United Nations' World Population Prospects 2022 report, China's fertility rate will increase from 119 rises to 1 year in 205048, (less than 2.)1 replacement level), the total population will fall to 7 by 21006.7 billion.
Looking back, the proportion of the Chinese population is also declining, historically the Chinese population has long accounted for one-third of the world's population, accounting for 37% in 1820, stable at 22% from 1950 to 1980, but only 17% in 2023.
According to the United Nations, from 2023 to 2100, China's total population will decline the most, accounting for 17% of the global population from 17% to 61%, and is the only populous country with a significant decline.
What are the economic consequences of demographic change?
According to the data released this time, in terms of age composition, the proportion of the working-age population between the ages of 16 and 59 fell from 62% in 2022 to 613%, and the proportion of the population aged 60 and over increased from 198% to 211%, the aging trend is further highlighted.
Aging is like a chronic disease in an economy, the proportion of young adults who work is getting smaller and smaller, and the proportion of elderly people who need to be supported by the whole society is increasing, resulting in the expansion of the pension gap and the heavy social burden, so it is not easy for young people to live on their own, and they are even more reluctant to have children, coupled with the relative reluctance of the elderly to consume, the economic vitality is weakened, and the society is caught in a vicious circle.
Ratings agency Moody's said China's real GDP growth rate is expected to grow from an average of 6.0% between 2014-230% slows down to 4. in 2024 and 20250%；A range of structural factors, such as an aging population and a shrinking labor force, as well as real estate pressures and slow productivity growth, will drive the potential growth rate further down, to 3Around 5%.
Yi Fuxian, a senior researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is even more pessimistic, arguing that the birth in 2023 is only one-third of that of 1990, which means that China's manufacturing industry will decline rapidly.
The proportion of children is positively correlated with the consumption rate of residents. Births in 2023 are much lower than expected, meaning that domestic demand will remain sluggish, the economy and employment will have to continue to rely on exports, and there is an urgent need to improve external relations.
The unexpectedly rapid aging of the population and the shrinking labor force mean that China's economic downturn is not cyclical, but structural and irreversible, and China will not be able to build a 'new international order'. ”
But experts say China has the time and resources to manage the transformation of its workforce.
Professor Bestu, a population policy expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believes that China is no different from other countries that have deindustrialized and shifted to the service sector.
The population is becoming more educated and skilled, and is getting healthier, and they want to work in other jobs than in factories or construction.
*Aware of this and planning for it over the past decade, it is expected that this direction of development will continue. Betus said.
How to save fertility?
China's demographic trends over the years have been largely influenced by the controversial "one-child" policy.
The policy was introduced around 1979 to slow population growth. Families who violated the rules were fined, and some lost their jobs or were forced to have their abortions induced.
The policy has also led to an imbalance in the gender ratio due to the "preference for sons" mentality in some places.
In 2016, China abolished the "one-child" policy, allowing couples to have two children.
In 2021, the authorities eased the restrictions to "three children". For example, Changsha, Hunan Province, issued a new policy to provide a one-time childcare subsidy of 10,000 yuan per child for families with three or more children.
In order to promote young people to get married, some places have also organized blind date activities, and China's Supreme Court has also come forward to try to curb the bride price.
At the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, this issue was made a priority, and it was promised to "establish a system of fertility support policies". However, these measures have not led to a significant increase in the birth rate.
Some experts say that this is because the burden of childcare is still heavy outside of the "birth" policy. For example, it is still difficult for women to balance childcare and work, and good childcare resources such as kindergartens and nurseries are insufficient.
Su Yue, chief China economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), believes that without effective policy responses, such as household-focused fiscal transfers, improving working conditions for female workers, and increasing social welfare coverage for migrant workers, China will face challenges in replicating Japan's stable fertility rate.
Addressing youth unemployment is also crucial, as youth unemployment leads to late marriage and childbearing. Japan has long been plagued by a declining birthrate, but new policies have been tried in some areas, such as the small town of Nagi, where the birth rate has doubled in the past nine years, from an average of 1 to 1 per woman of childbearing age4 children grew to 28, thanks to a wide-reaching, family-friendly policy program.
Locally, families not only receive maternity bonuses and childcare allowances, but the cost of sending their children to nursery schools is half of the national average.
However, while Nagi's success is amazing, it's just a small rural town.
Elsewhere in East Asia, the harsh workplace culture makes it difficult for mothers or fathers to balance work and family.
One example is South Korea, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and has spent more than $130 billion to encourage families to have children. Some of these programs are relatively easy to think of, such as free childcare, housing benefits, or support for IVF programs.
Others are more creative, such as offering holidays to civil servants so they can go home and have children. None of them, however, seem to have worked.
In South Korea, we have legal working hours, and maternity and paternity leave is sufficient," said Kim Hye-won, an assistant professor at Seoul National University who studies fertility issues in the region. "But the use rate is low, especially for paternity leave. It's really an implementation issue. ”
On the Internet, similar complaints are widespread, such as the cruel mode of "996" for migrant workers, and wanting to take paternity and parental leave has become a joke.
Population economist Liang Jianzhang wrote an article suggesting that if China takes out 4% of GDP (5 trillion) every year and apportion it to each family, the two-child family, from the birth of the child to adulthood, can get a total of more than 1 million maternity benefits, 1 million sounds like a lot, but it is the direct economic burden of a family, raising a child to the age of 18, the average cost of raising a child is about 500,000 yuan, and the cost of raising a family in big cities is about 1 million yuan.
Chinese mouth ** mistake?
Low fertility is a common problem faced by countries after economic development, with economic prosperity, urbanization increases, the cost of raising children, people's quality of life and personal value and other changes in concept, will bring about a decrease in fertility, and the reduction of fertility rate is actually a sign of social development and progress.
Indeed, it is particularly serious in East Asian countries, especially the fertility rate of the Confucian cultural circle in East Asia is the lowest in the world.
The reasons behind this are varied, including the high population density of the city; Emphasis on education leads to high parenting costs and older age of marriage and childbearing; and the low proportion of children born out of wedlock.
But Yi Fuxian believes that on top of these commonalities, Chinese mainland is also affected by the implementation of family planning policies for nearly half a century. He called it "the one-child policy built on the sand of data."
Yi Fuxian believes that China's population policy for decades has been based on mistakes, such as in 1980, Song Jian and others** The Chinese population will reach 42 in 2080600 million, "scared the decision-makers to implement the one-child policy", in fact, China's fertility rate began to fall below the replacement level in 1991, and family planning should have been stopped long ago.
He blamed China's demographers for being too conservative in liberalizing birth restrictions in the first 20 years of this century, with a two-child policy and a comprehensive two-child policy.
For example, in 2012, Cai Fang and 17 other top demographers opposed the implementation of a comprehensive two-child policy in the book "Changes in Population Forms and Adjustment of Population Policy", because the fertility rate would exceed 44 (i.e., more than 47 million births per year); Wang Pei'an, deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, Zhai Zhenwu, president of the Chinese Population Association, and others in the book "Research on the Measurement of Population Changes in the Implementation of the Comprehensive Two-Child Policy" (Yi believes that this is the theoretical basis for the comprehensive two-child policy in 2016), their ** fertility rate will reach 2 in 201809 peaks, and 1 in 202375, that is, 21.89 million, 15.5 million people will be born in 2018 and 2023.
The data also confirms that the above ** is far from the actual data"Late"The actual effect of the two-child and three-child policies is limited.
China's new population was around 6.6 million at that time"Two children alone"After the policy, it climbed slightly to about 7.1 million in 2014, and then fell to 6.8 million in 2015;
China immediately liberalized the "comprehensive two-child" policy, with more than 8 million new people added in 2016 and about 7.37 million in 2017, but this trend only lasted for two years, and in 2018 and 2019, the new population plunged sharply, only about 5.3 million and 4.67 million;
In 2020, China entered the epidemic era, and the net increase in population "halved" to 2.04 million that year;
In 2021, it continued to drop sharply to 480,000, and in June of this year, China announced the release of "three children";
However, since 2022, China's net increase in population has not rebounded due to the "three-child" policy, and has even further fallen into the shrinkage range, with a decrease of 850,000 people;
By 2023, the contraction has deepened to 2.08 million.
This process has greatly exceeded expectations. The Green Paper on Population and Labor released in early 2019 by the Institute of Population and Labor Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, an official think tank, pointed out that the Chinese population will reach its peak level in 10 years (2029), after which negative growth will occur.
However, this process came 7 years earlier than the official **.