Behind China’s one-child policy is a growing army living alone

In her chic Beijing studio, 26-year-old Summer Liu relaxes on a sofa, admiring the pink vase she keeps full of fresh flowers. In the eastern city of Jining, Hu Jiying, 81, sits on an old bed with clothes, towels and half a bag of snacks scattered around her, worrying about the cost of her medicine.

What these two women have in common is that they live alone, two ends of a rapidly growing demographic that is breaking down China’s traditional family structure and presenting the government with a social and environmental headache.

China had 66 million registered one-person homes in 2014, or 15 per cent of all households, compared with 6 per cent in 1990, according to government data. The actual number may be as many as 83 million – more than the population of Germany – and could rise to 132 million by 2050, according to Jean Yeung, director of the centre for family and population research at the National University of Singapore.

“The prevalence will only increase in the next few decades due to continued ageing, migration and divorce,” Yeung said. “Some choose to live alone because they have more economic resources and prefer more time and space for themselves; others have no choice.”

Those forces are eating away at an economic structure based on family units that goes back centuries, part of the twin Confucian values of loyalty to the emperor and filial obedience known as Zhongxiao that Chairman Mao Zedong tried to destroy during the Cultural Revolution.