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China population: Beijing’s economic growth anxiety on show as mouthpiece focuses on demographics for 3 days
- A third consecutive editorial focusing on China’s population strategy appeared in the People’s Daily newspaper on Wednesday
- China’s population declined for the first time in six decades last year, with reports suggesting India became the world’s most populous country at the end of April
A series of editorials in a key mouthpiece newspaper are seen to represent concerns from Beijing that China’s demographics crisis could impact economic growth, with the latest highlighting the need to “improve confidence in population development” and focus on the cultivation of high-quality talent.
A third consecutive editorial by Zhong Yin, a pen name that literally means the voice of the central government, focusing on China’s population strategy appeared in the People’s Daily on Wednesday.
It’s the right time to bring up the issue of enhancing population quality
“There has been heated discussion on the negative growth of the Chinese population, the falling birth rate, and the fact that it’s been overtaken by India. I think the unusual explanations in People’s Daily are a response to concerns about the impact of all these things on China’s economic growth,” said Liu Hongyan, deputy director of the China Population and Development Research Centre under the National Health Commission.
“It’s the right time to bring up the issue of enhancing population quality, because unlike in the early stage of reform and opening-up, when we relied on labour-intensive manufacturing for growth, we’re now in a totally different situation where technology and talent are the key issues.”
The People’s Daily editorials elaborate on President Xi Jinping’s vision on how China should tackle its ongoing demographic shift, which includes a rapidly ageing society and a falling birth rate, during a recent meeting with top officials.
But China should take advantage of the education level, health, skills of its population and continue strengthening to create a “talent dividend”, the Communist Party mouthpiece added.
Calling for the “full development of individuals”, the latest piece on Wednesday noted that last year the gross enrolment rate in higher education stood at 59.6 per cent, while 95.5 per cent had completed China’s nine-year compulsory education system.
Its basic pension scheme has also covered 1.05 billion people, or around 75 per cent of the total population, and the annual disposable income per person has more than doubled from 16,500 yuan (US$2,367) to 36,883 yuan in the past decade, it added.
Yuan Xin, a professor of demography at Nankai University’s School of Economics, said China is seeing a growing disadvantage in terms of population size and structure, and the vigorous population migration in the past decades, which has optimised the distribution of human capital, “will finally become quiet”.
“The only one favourable factor now is the rising quality of the population, where new potential is lying,” he said.
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But India, despite being younger, has little chance to overtake China economically as it is still lagging behind in many areas, including education and gender equality, as well as infrastructure.
With Beijing focusing on the capability of human resources, health and education should be the two major sectors to be boosted in the future, Yuan added.
“Health is the basis of human capital, while in education, more efforts should be spent to ensure equality and groom talent based on market needs,” he said.
College graduates have widely faced a skills and market demand mismatch in recent years as businesses increasingly demand interdisciplinary and hi-end skilled workers amid China’s structural reform, but the education system still centres around exams.
