China population: plan to lift birth restrictions in the northeast panned for not tackling economic roots of crisis

China’s National Health Commission has suggested the northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin can experiment with lifting birth restrictions
But the proposal has been criticised by Chinese online, who say it fails to address the cause of the problem which is the region’s stagnating economy

China economy

Sidney Leng

Published: 6:45pm, 19 Feb 2021

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A proposal to ease birth restrictions in China’s struggling northeast rust belt has been ridiculed online, with numerous residents criticising the government for its uninspired response to the region’s demographic crisis.

The northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin can experiment with lifting restrictions after more research is done to ascertain the impact on the local economy, the National Health Commission said in a statement from last August that was released on Wednesday.

The announcement followed a proposal from vice-governor of Liaoning province, Chen Xiangqun, to the National People’s Congress (NPC) last May in which he proposed the northeast become the first region to drop China’s strict birth restrictions. He also called for more central government investment in childcare and preschool education.

But the idea has failed to catch the imagination of many people online.

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“I think the root of the problem is that the government does not have a good plan for the development of the northeast. If you don’t develop the economy there, how can they raise children?” said one widely shared comment on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

“Letting go of the birth policy could mean more births, but then they would just settle in Beijing and other rich coastal cities, unless you stop them from leaving the northeast,” said another popular comment.

The three rust-belt provinces, which kick-started China’s industrialisation in the 1950s, have the lowest fertility rates and the highest economic burden of elder care in the country.

Their demographic decline has largely mirrored the region’s economic fortunes over the past two decades, and it continues to lose young talent to other parts of the country.

Between 2014 and 2018, only about 14 per cent of Heilongjiang-born graduates who left the province to go to university returned to work, according to Jiang Tonghe, an official from the province.

In some border towns and cities in Heilongjiang, China’s northernmost province, the government began allowing couples to have three children from 2016, while the rest of the country was still beholden to a strict two-child policy. But the relaxation in family planning rules failed to halt declining fertility rates.

In Heihe, a city of about 1.5 million people bordering Russia, the number of newborns has been falling consistently since 2010. Its birth rate declined to 3.9 live births per one thousand people in 2019, from 8.6 live births in 2010, according to local government data.

In its online post, the National Health Commission said the economy had become the main factor influencing fertility rates, and admitted easing restrictions had had limited impact on increasing births.

It’s a mystery to me why we experiment in the northeast region where the willingness to have children is low

Ma Guangyuan

Liberalising China’s controversial family planning policy has been a major topic of policy discussion in recent years, as more officials and academics have warned about a looming demographic crisis.

Although the results of an official census done last year have not been released, the number newborns recorded in the country’s household registration system declined 15 per cent during a coronavirus-hit 2020. Tumbling regional birth rates have hinted at a growing population crisis in the world’s most populous country.

“It’s a mystery to me why we experiment in the northeast region where the willingness to have children is low, rather than the places where there is high willingness to have children but people cannot due to policy reasons,” said Ma Guangyuan, an independent economist.

“What is the basis for setting up a pilot programme in northeast China? Especially when it’s imperative to fully liberalise birth control across China. Why do we still need to experiment?”