Patriotism may hold key to China births challenge
Despite the switch to a two-child policy, ageing not overpopulation is the biggest problem facing the country today and a solution must be found
The increase in births attributed to the scrapping of China’s one-child policy in favour of two children has quickly lost momentum, prompting concerns among policymakers about the social and economic consequences for future generations of a permanently depressed birth rate.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, births fell by 3.5 per cent to 17.2 million nationwide last year, erasing almost half the rise.
Officials have said the one-child policy, introduced 40-odd years ago to rein in population growth, prevented 400 million births, albeit at the cost of criticism of human rights abuses such as forced abortion and sterilisation, and a gender imbalance estimated at 30 million males.
It was linked to the demographic dividend of a bulge in the workforce relative to population growth in the following decades that was fundamental to the country’s economic rise.
China has now exhausted this dividend. As a result, in less than three years since the switch to a two-child policy to counter an ageing population, there is another big debate about state birth control amid a greying society.
