Opinion | China’s population crisis: Beijing must address its falling births and ageing workforce
- China’s population is rapidly ageing and its birth rate falling sharply, leaving the country with a looming demographic challenge
- Some 7 million statisticians will fan out across the country in November for the seventh census since 1949. This is Beijing’s chance to correct course
A crisis is looming for China. The country’s workforce is greying and its population will soon begin shrinking – if it is not already. This is set to create big problems for the world’s most populous country.
While there are signs China’s leadership is starting to take the demographic “grey rhino” seriously, Beijing has not yet grasped the enormity of the situation, taking it for granted China’s population of 1.4 billion is too big and sticking to a family planning policy that essentially punishes “excessive” new births.
If the rate drops to around 1.1, the next generation will be about half the size of the current generation. China’s fertility rate is about 1.5, according to official figures, although demographers argue it could be closer to 1.1.
Beijing’s decision to relax its stringent one-child policy and allow two children per family has failed to boost new births. Decades of economic growth and urbanisation have changed the country’s culture.
Last year new births dropped to the lowest level since the Great Chinese Famine in the early 1960s. Like neighbouring Japan and South Korea, China is heading towards a shortfall in new births.