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The statement has immediately caused a stir and gone viral online, prompting excited speculation that Beijing is considering further relaxing birth controls not only in the northeastern provinces but also nationwide. This forced the commission to issue another statement two days later, playing down any prospect of policy changes and saying that the motion merely merited further study.

Coincidence or not, the commission’s statement came just two weeks before the opening of the NPC’s annual plenary session where the debate on removing birth controls is expected to feature prominently. The 10-day meeting, starting from March 5, will discuss and approve China’s next five-year economic development plan for the period 2021 to 2025.

It also came before the government is scheduled to release the findings of its seventh census in April, which is expected to paint a grim picture of demographic changes and thus put more pressure on the government to act quickly.

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According to various official estimates, China’s population will peak at between 1.44 billion and 1.46 billion in 2030 before entering a long period of decline. Some expect the population to fall to less than 800 million by 2100.

The population of over-65s is expected to reach 300 million by 2025, accounting for about 20 per cent of the total, significantly up from 176 million at the end of 2019, about 12.6 per cent of the total.

Meanwhile, the country’s labour force, people aged 16 to 59, has continued to shrink to 896 million in 2019, the eighth year in a row, and is projected to decline to 830 million by 2030.

Sensing a demographic crisis on the horizon, China relaxed its 35-year-old one-child policy in late 2015 and allowed all couples to have two children. The number of births rose the next year but has since declined sharply.

In 2019, the number of births per 1,000 people fell to 10.48, the lowest since 1952.

Another benchmark is the total fertility rate, the number of children a woman gives birth to, is estimated at 1.7, according to the World Bank. The general consensus is that if the number is below 2.1, it usually signals a decline in the size of the population.

The government is scheduled to release the 2020 birth figures along with the preliminary data from the population census starting from April. But demographers expect the figures to show further declines because of the pandemic.

In fact, the demographic time bomb has already exploded in the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang in the northeast, known as China’s rust belt. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the northeastern provinces where heavy industries including steel, automobiles, and petrochemicals are concentrated had powered the Chinese economy. But in recent decades, they have been beset with industrial decline and a falling population as young people have escaped from the frigid weather and shrinking cities to look for jobs and settle elsewhere.

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According to state media reports, all three provinces reported a net outflow of residents to a combined total of 1.82 million between 2013 and 2019.

Birth rates in the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang were the lowest in China, at 6.45 per thousand, 6.05 per thousand, and 5.73 per thousand respectively, compared to the 2019 national average of 10.48 per thousand. Once the death rates were subtracted from the birth rates, all three provinces reported negative population growth.

At the NPC’s annual session last year, Chen Xiangqun, the executive deputy governor of Liaoning, directly appealed to the central government to allow the province to remove all birth controls and provide financial support for education of preschool children and training of teachers.

In 2018, Liaoning became the country’s first province to offer financial inducements including subsidies for child care to encourage couples to have a second child.

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Will the Chinese leadership listen to Chen’s appeal, which is now echoed nationwide as the recent debate has shown?

The National Health Commission’s two statements seemed to suggest that the central government has yet to make up its mind as such a major policy adjustment will lead to other significant policy changes, from education to housing and medical care to other basic public services.

But for many demographers, even if Beijing decided to abolish all birth controls now, that would probably still be too little, too late after nearly 35 years of harsh family planning.

Following decades of government policy encouraging people to marry late and have a child late, Chinese couples’ willingness to bear children is very low, compounded by the high costs associated with raising a child.

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The Health Times, citing official data, reported recently that the infertility rate among Chinese married couples was very high, estimated at between 12.5 and 15 per cent.

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, gave an apt description of the mammoth difficulties China faced in an interview with the Health Times. Comparing China’s falling birth rates to a rock rolling down the hill, he said now the rock had reached the bottom of the hill, it was going to be really hard to get it back up again.

Wang Xiangwei is a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post. He is now based in Beijing as editorial adviser to the paper