For the first time in years, for the first time in thousands of years.
According to data released today by the National Bureau of Statistics, the national population at the end of the year was 14117.5 billion, a decrease of 850,000 compared with the previous year, which is also the first time in China's history that there has been a negative population growth since 1960 and 1961, when there were 10 million and 348 people respectively.
This data marks the beginning of a new era in Chinese history. So why is this a new era? Because the most recent population decline was due to the three-year famine.
In fact, population decline is a very common phenomenon in Chinese history, usually occurring in the middle and late dynasties, with wars and famines, the population will decline significantly.
However, after the establishment of the new dynasty, the society was re-stabilized, the economy was restored, and the population gradually increased. After thousands of years of change, China has gone through dozens of dynasties, and the total population continues to spiral.
Sixty-one years ago, a war led to a devastating population. This is unique in Chinese history. The population problem has always been a major problem, because without people, there would be nothing.
With people, there will be a splendid civilization, a developed economy, and a good life. From the perspective of putting people first, we cannot pay too much attention to the population issue.
Under normal conditions of economic and social development, the population is declining, and we cannot pay too much attention to it. In the coming decades, centuries from now, people may look back on history and see that 2022 is a watershed year that divides history into two segments.
Now, what we can do is to pay attention to it and work together to study and solve the problem of the century. Is population decline good or bad? Some people wonder that in the 80s of the last century, experts said that family planning should be carried out because of the large population.
Now that the population has increased to more than 1.4 billion, it is said that there are fewer people, and it is necessary to encourage childbearing. What's going on? As a matter of fact, the population problem has never been just a question of quantity, but also a question of structure and quality.
Even if our population were halved, we would still be the second largest in the world. The improvement in the quality of our people is obvious. According to the Ministry of Education, there are more than 2900 million people, the nine-year compulsory education consolidation rate reached 954 per cent, and the gross enrolment ratio at the upper secondary level was 914 per cent and a gross enrolment ratio of 57 in tertiary education8%。
In 2022, China's aging population is becoming increasingly severe. According to statistics, the proportion of the population aged 60 and above in China has reached 198%, nearly one-fifth, and the proportion of the population over 65 years old has also reached 149%, which is already close to the threshold of moderate aging.
Worryingly, the birth rate is only 677 , it has reached a state of ultra-low birthrate, and the aging trend is constantly strengthening. The aging of society will lead to a decline in the proportion of the population in the labor force.
According to the data, in 2022, the proportion of China's working-age population will be only 62%, a decrease of 05 percentage points, a decrease of 7 from 20122 percentage points.
At the same time, the proportion of people over 60 years old increased from 14 in 20123% to 198%, the rate of rise is faster. This means that the proportion of the workforce population in the future will face further challenges, and we need to take measures to deal with the problem of ageing to ensure the continued and stable development of society.
The core of the problem is that as fewer people work and more people eat, the accumulation of social wealth slows down, the pressure on the working-age labor force increases, and economic development slows down or even declines.
Although some people will think that in the era of automation and intelligence, the decrease in the labor force does not mean that the wealth created will decrease, and the competition will also be weakened, so as to avoid brutal involution, this is only a theoretical assumption.
The reality is that in a highly aging society, older people will have more say in economic, political, social, cultural and other aspects, and young people will not only have to work hard to feed more old people, but also face the upward channel firmly occupied by older people, which will trigger psychological changes in them.
The social wealth they create is shared by more and more elderly people, and the improvement of their living standards is a problem, what will they think? The proportion of the elderly population is too large, and the older people dominate the social trend of thought, and are the social ideas active?
Will economic and social innovation be strengthened? These are all questions that require us to ponder.
In this world full of fierce competition, even with the help of automation and intelligence, when the effort is not proportional to the gain, the upward channel is blocked, the improvement of living standards is slow, and the social trend is dull, how much motivation can young people maintain?
Under the dual repression of material and psychology, young people may lose the motivation to struggle and choose to lie down, just like Japanese society. If a country does not have a positive and enterprising spirit, it will lose its advantage in world competition.
The gap between other lightly traveled countries and your faltering steps will only grow. And the countries with negative population growth in the world do not have much reference significance for us.
So, let's take a look at countries with populations of more than 20 million. For example, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Poland.
Since 2009, Japan has experienced negative growth, and the aging problem is serious, and the economy has not grown for many years. In the last two years, it is possible that Germany's total GDP will be surpassed by Germany, and its per capita GDP will be surpassed by South Korea.
South Korea is likely to overtake Japan in GDP per capita, as its negative population growth is 12 years earlier than Japan's. However, over the past decade, South Korea's economic growth has slowed significantly, and the involution is severe, making it the highest in the world.
According to Han **'s estimates, if the aging situation continues, its pension insurance system may be difficult to maintain after 30 years.
Both Russia and Germany are facing serious demographic problems. Despite its vast territory and abundant resources, Russia lacks vigorous vitality. For the first time since World War II, Germany experienced negative population growth in 1975.
However, Germany's population is still growing, thanks to a diverse immigrant population. Germany's economy is confident of catching up with Japan because of its diverse population**.
The bottom line: While both Russia and Germany are facing demographic problems, Germany has maintained a growing population by diversifying its population**, which has boosted its economy.
Negative population growth has a huge impact on the economic and social vitality of a large country. Although developed countries have achieved wealth accumulation, if the population growth is negative, the huge population base can still maintain a high standard of living.
However, in countries that grow old before they get rich, such as Russia, Croatia, Ukraine, etc., the people's living standards will remain at a low level. At the moment, there is no good way to solve this problem in the world, and the only feasible thing is to slow down the rate of population decline.
But in any case, we should remain optimistic because there will always be a way to solve the problem. Negative population growth will directly affect the development of urban and rural areas, and with the increase of urbanization rate, the population of rural areas and townships will continue to decrease and concentrate in large cities.
In recent years, the number of provinces with negative population growth has increased significantly, and the negative population growth rate of six provinces is -1687% to -217%。On the contrary, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other provinces have higher population growth rates, mainly due to the high level of economic development in these regions, which are more attractive to the population.
Beijing and Tianjin, as the most developed cities in the north, are also typical areas of population inflow. For example, Beijing's population growth rate reached 12% in 10 years, while the surrounding Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Shanxi and other places were siphoned out of population, of which Inner Mongolia lost 65 percent in 10 years70,000 people, mainly to the Beijing-Tianjin area.
The Yangtze River Delta region is economically developed and an important region for population inflow, with Jiangsu and Zhejiang ranking among the country's population growth rates.
II.III. The surrounding Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and other places have a large number of people pouring into the Yangtze River Delta, especially Anhui, which is the closest to the Yangtze River Delta, and most of the cities are flowing out, among which the resource-based city of Tongling is more serious.
In the economically backward areas, they are not only attracted by the developed areas, but also by the provincial capitals and developed cities of the province. In the past decade, the population growth rates of provincial capitals such as Hohhot, Hefei, Nanning, Kunming, and Zhengzhou have been: 53% and 4607%, which is the fastest growing population in the province.
Similarly, developed cities such as Qingdao, Xiamen, Sanya, etc., have population growth rates of . 23% and 50At 48 percent, it is one of the fastest growing areas in the province in terms of population, second only to the provincial capital.
The development trend of the world is destined to make the strong always strong, and the weak to become weaker. There are always more opportunities in developed regions than in backward regions, and first-tier cities and strong second-tier cities have continued to prosper and prosper under the effect of population import.
In other regions, most of them are in danger of declining. As ordinary people, we need to know how to better avoid being photographed to death in this historical tide, or reduce the impact of demographic problems on us as much as possible, and continue to live our own lives.
First of all, we must understand the general trend, have a long-term plan, and do not blindly follow the trend. Over the past two decades, many people have gone on a buying spree in the blind pursuit of real estate appreciation.
But in the future, we need to keep our sanity and not be fooled by the hype of real estate companies and agents. Except for the main areas of first-tier cities and second-tier cities, it is difficult for other places to appreciate, and may even not be able to sell.
Small cities and small markets are destined to shrink gradually, so invest as close to big cities as possible.
It is recommended that everyone choose to go to big cities for development as much as possible. Small and medium-sized cities, especially small cities, may become decayed and deserted in the future, just like the rural areas today, with gradually decreasing populations, fewer opportunities, and becoming desolate and deserted.
In the age of the Internet, anything can grow rapidly, and small cities may be obsolete by the times. Therefore, in addition to the elderly and children in rural areas, the elderly and children in townships and towns may also become "left-behind elderly" and "left-behind children".
If you've found your own little place in a small city, go ahead and live here. Demographic changes and economic ups and downs are a gradual process that will not have a huge impact on our work and life.
We will always have a solution, there must be a road before the car reaches the mountain, and the boat will naturally go straight to the bridge. In any case, the general trend of development in our country is upward.