Deliberations |Wen Qiulin.
Now, China is facing a very real problem – a low birth rate and negative population growth. In the middle of last month, the ** Information Office held a press conference to introduce the situation of Chinese population, and the national population at the end of 2023 (including the population of 31 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government and active military personnel, excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents and foreigners living in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) was 140967 million, a decrease of 2.08 million from the end of the previous year.
This is the year in which the Chinese population has decreased the most. In this regard, many people are very anxious, and the reasons are very simple: 1. If the population decreases, the country will not be a country; 2. The population has decreased, consumption has also disappeared, and economic development cannot be talked about. Cumulative national strength based on population is the development model of past and ancient societies, and its core is reflected in national wars, and strong national strength will inevitably destroy small countries. However, this is only a primitive way of competing based on demographic conditions.
At present, the biggest problem is still not knowing what to do, whether it is experts or scholars, no one knows what to do, and how the Chinese population will evolve in the future.
Indeed, there are many factors affecting the lower and lower birth rate, such as housing, education, employment and other multiple factors, and the cost of childbirth, parenting and education is getting higher and higher, which increases the fertility concerns of young people, and many young people choose to postpone and reduce childbirth; Lifestyles and values are changing, and young people are increasingly focusing on personal development and quality of life, rather than building families and having children; Many women choose to devote more time and energy to their careers, so they are less and less aware of childbearing.
In reality, some people have some truth in their anxiety about depopulation, but they don't have to be overly anxious. China has 14With a population of 0.9 billion, India has surpassed China in 2022, and the population gap between China and India is likely to continue to widen. Let India become the "world's most populous country", even if China loses 5 million to 8 million people a year, by 2080, there will be at least 1 billion people, and it will still be the world's second most populous country. Compared with the population of developed countries such as the United States, Germany, France, and Japan, China still has a large advantage in population.
In this sense, the short population is not the real problem in China, but how to optimize the population structure is the top priority. The size of the population mainly depends on the quality of the population. The low-quality population is the pressure, the high-quality population is the driving force, and the medium-quality population is the stability.
At present, the impact of negative population growth has not been clearly felt in China, because the population is changing slowly. Last century.
The sixties and seventies were the peak period of birth in China, and after the death of this generation, the decline in the total number of Chinese population will be more obvious, which is an unavoidable problem for a large country like China.
It was the peak birth rate in the last century that contributed to China's rapid economic growth, which increased by roughly 20 times in 40 years. Although China's economy is driven by population growth, it is not an absolute factor. In other words, the impact of Chinese population decline on economic growth is also limited.
Some people like to compare China's consumption with that of the United States. Let's take a look at the relevant data, the current total consumption of US residents is about three times that of China, which is a big gap. But if you look back to 2000, the total consumption of American residents was about 10 times that of China. Over the past 20 years, the gap has narrowed considerably, and it will narrow further over time. In other words, China's household consumption will increase by a large margin.
Indeed, China's low fertility rate is an irreconcilable contradiction, and with the development of society and the improvement of people's living standards, it is impossible to avoid the population problem. In other words, the decline of the Chinese population is a "by-product" of rapid economic development. Fortunately, with the continuous improvement of the level of science and technology, the degree of mechanization will be higher and higher. Many of the things that used to be done by humans will be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) in the future.
From another point of view, the vast majority of the population lost by the negative population growth of the Chinese population in the future will be in the underdeveloped rural areas. In the long run, China's urbanization rate will increase rapidly as the rural population disappears, especially in megacities and large and medium-sized cities.
What is the core for the country? It's not strength or economy, it's the imbalance between life and death, even though the state has to invest to support the elderly. No matter how you look at it, it can explain why after the scale of the Chinese population decreases, the demographic quality of the whole society will be further improved, and at the same time, the per capita wealth will also increase simultaneously.