Amid China’s looming population crisis, is Western ‘de-family’ culture creating more single, childless Chinese?
- China recorded its first population decline in six decades last year and its birth rate hit record low
- Some demographers and officials have called for a return to traditional Chinese family values
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Shanghai interpreter, exhibition agent and online influencer Judy Shen is 40, single and childless.
She is also happy with her life, especially as more people around her are making similar choices.
“I’m not a celibate, but I am very likely to remain single all my life because marriage is not even among my top three priorities,” she said. “There are just so many other things I want to pursue.”
To Chinese officials and demographers, the growing number of single adults like Chen is an alarming factor contributing to a falling birth rate and ageing population in the world’s second-largest economy.
Traditional values about family have encountered tremendous challenges, but the thousand-year-deep roots of respecting the elderly and caring for the young are still there
Some blame the influence of Western culture, including tolerance of diverse lifestyles and an emphasis on individualism, and have called for a return to traditional Chinese family values – starting a family, nurturing children and supporting the elderly – to tackle a looming demographic crisis.
Professor Zeng Yi, a population expert at Peking University’s National School of Development, said the rising number of adults living alone was “very worrying”.
He urged people to stop promoting such lifestyles in the media because it would lead to “a large group of empty-nest elderly people” and an “accelerating decline in the working-age population”.