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China needs ‘urgent’ response to low population growth challenge: economic adviser
- Former senior party official Ma Jiantang suggests changes to family planning laws and birth-friendly policies to address economic challenges
- China’s changing demographic structure has already had a huge impact on the economy, and will continue to do so, he says
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Phoebe Zhangin Shenzhen
China’s population development has entered a “new normal” of “low and even negative growth”, according to a senior economic adviser who also called for a change in family planning laws to encourage more births.
In a speech on May 19 to a financial forum in Shenzhen, Ma Jiantang, former Communist Party secretary at the Development Research Centre of the State Council, said China was facing a low birth rate, an ageing population, as well as a declining proportion of young people, and a shrinking working-age cohort.
According to the New Economist think tank, which posted a report of the speech on its WeChat account on Monday, Ma said the structural changes to China’s population would “deeply affect” the country’s economy and required an “urgent” response.
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He stressed that the pool of China’s workers had shrunk by 60 million over the past 12 years, which had had “a huge impact” on the economy, adding that many cities were struggling to recruit and battling unemployment and rising labour costs.
Ma suggested further changes to family planning laws – which were modified in 2015 and 2021 to allow second and third children. Despite these updates, the legislation’s guiding ideology was still family planning, not encouraging more births, he said.
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Ma called for birth policies to promote assisted reproductive technology, registration of children born out of wedlock, improved birth insurance, extended maternity leave and more childcare centres.
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