China must scrap remaining birth control policies to avert demographic crisis, says medical researcher
Vocal critic of the system Yi Fuxian says nation needs to address greying population and fall in numbers of people of working age
Yi Fuxian, one of the most vocal opponents of China’s birth control policies, says the government should scrap the remaining measures to address a looming demographic crisis that is pushing the nation into Japan’s path of economic stagnation.
China needs to encourage couples to have more children to address the country’s looming demographic crisis as its population ages and the number of people of working age falls, according to Yi, a medical researcher originally from Hunan province who now works as a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.
From 2015, some couples in some areas were allowed to have a second child and the pilot scheme became national policy at the start of this year, ending over three decades of the one-child policy.
Yi said the pilot effort had proved a failure as fertility rates continued to decline in 2015. Instead of a “baby boom”, China’s new births in 2015 declined by 320,000. China’s fertility rate was less than 1.3 births per woman, Yi said, among the world’s lowest.
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“It’s already too late … China’s population is ageing quickly and will start to shrink soon and there’s no way for China to maintain strong economic growth under such demographic conditions,” said Yi, who the wrote the book Big Country With an Empty Nest, detailing China’s demographic challenges.