How China’s one-child policy has hurt its aging population – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

The world looks with awe at China’s economic achievements, but because of its one-child policy, it not only gained fast economic growth but also an aging population that offers an equally devastating income trap for the decades to come, unless it invests more smartly into its people, says China veteran Ian Johnson at the Vietnam Brief.

Ian Johnson:

China getting into the middle income trap is still very much up in the air. It is not yet clear will China become a rich country; per capita income is still on the lower side. It is still a middle-income country. The educational level is not broad enough to support a jump from middle-income to high-income level. China doesn’t have better educated mass population and education is yet poor in the countryside and there are a huge number of people who just have middle school educational level. The government is investing in it but this could be too late too little for China. Scott Rozelle in his survey studies in rural setup about the educational levels concludes that the educational setup hasn’t grown as it should have for China to be a developed country. China has till now ignored to invest heavily in the educational and technical sector and this is hurting China badly. In the modern world with all the sophistication and technological advancement around, China doesn’t have enough numbers to continue and support its economic growth.

The one-child policy has hurt China’s interests in more than one way. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is also at the receiving end of this policy. Even though the declining population does not affect PLA much as PLA has been on a program for decades to get smaller, more professional and higher tech. It (PLA) is more focused on high end weapon systems and have lower response time as it won’t be fighting a war involving a million soldiers and in that regard the population doesn’t matter much. The challenge however is that there is still the idea of PLA being a mass army where the pay is not very good, educational level is not very good, a typical recruit is a rural person with low school education, they have college graduates but not enough who can operate the modern weapon systems.

The decreasing population due to state policies poses a high risk for Chinese progress. It has already slowed down and have sounded alarm bells in the system. The skewed sex ratio is yet another problem which has led to increase in human trafficking and increase in crimes. China’s worries are real and they are shifting from one-child policy to three-child policy, however the relief is yet very far off.

More at the Vietnam Brief.

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Three-child policy: how to get women on board – Zhang Lijia

 

Zhang Lijia

China’s new three-child policy has received a lackluster reception among its population. Author Zhang Lijia offers a few tips for the government to make its policy attractive for women: offer financial incentives, significantly expand its childcare capacity, and promote women-friendly policies and equality, she writes in the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia:

Why aren’t young people keen on having children these days? First, living costs – and child-rearing costs – are high. Although the state offers nine years of compulsory education, urban parents are all vying to sign up their children for extra lessons and extracurricular activities, from English to piano.

The availability of childcare services in China is another headache. Young couples often have to rely on their parents or hire child minders, which only adds to the cost.

Furthermore, many educated professional women hesitate to have children due to the prevalence of sexual discrimination in the job marketplace.

Some companies refuse to hire women of child-bearing age or sack them if they become pregnant. I have heard stories of women being required to promise not to have children as a precondition for employment.

To deal with the issue, Chinese government agencies even issued a notice in 2019, forbidding prospective employers from asking female job candidates whether they were married or have children. While well intentioned, such a move was weak, to say the least.

For the women who have worked their way up to managerial positions, there is the worry that motherhood may send them back down the career ladder. The unfriendly environment for working mothers has deterred many women from having babies…

Evidence suggests that equality is good for fertility. Look at Europe as an example. France and Scandinavia have higher birth rates than southern European countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, which have less gender equality and more rigid family norms, and where new mothers are expected to stay at home.

 In contrast, France and the Nordic countries have a relaxed attitude to family norms. Their governments offer equal support to families that come in different forms: married couples, unwed couples, same-sex couples and single parents.

The Chinese government should allow single women to have children, should they wish, and grant equal rights to their children.

The current fertility rate in China is 1.3, while last year, Chinese women on average were willing to have 1.8 children, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. So, if China plays its cards right, there should be room for growth.

More in the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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Not only costs disrupt China's more-children policy - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Not only high costs are stopping Chinese women from getting more children, as the government wants them to for offsetting the dramatic aging process of the country, writes journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China,  in the South China Morning Post. "The reality is far more complex. One important reason, in my view, is that women have changed. They don’t care to be only the reproductive tool of the family or the state," she writes.

Zhang Lijia:

Why don’t Chinese want more babies? The high cost of raising children is often cited as the main reason. Expensive housing, education and health care make raising children a costly business. 

But the reality is far more complex. One important reason, in my view, is that women have changed. They don’t care to be only the reproductive tool of the family or the state. 

A large percentage of today’s women of childbearing age are from the one-child generation, who have grown up in an affluent society and enjoyed the lavish attention of their parents and grandparents. They tend to be assertive people who dare to pursue their own dreams. Many urban women are well educated and career-minded. 

The story Jojo Zhang, a 36-year-old bank manager in Beijing, narrates is quite typical. Zhang was one of the women who responded to a post I put up on WeChat, looking for women to interview who have given motherhood a miss. 

An only child, she had loving parents and a happy childhood. But she never had a burning desire to have children. About 10 years ago, some of her friends got married and started to have children. 

Few found the experience rewarding. “It just takes too much time and energy,” they advised her. “Don’t bother having children.” She took it to heart.

More in the South China Morning Post

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How a shrinking population will hit China - Howard French

Howard French

China´s demographic problems might stop its economic development in its tracks, writes author Howard French in the Atlantic.  Not only can China not deal with its aging population, "some Chinese experts now say that the country’s economic output may never match that of the U.S."

Howard French:

Recent events may well provide a preview of this reality. When Xi Jinping announced last year that he was slashing China’s armed forces by 300,000 troops, Beijing spun the news as proof of China’s peaceful intentions. Demographics provide a more compelling explanation. With the number of working-age Chinese men already declining—China’s working-age population shrank by 4.87 million people last year—labor is in short supply. As wages go up, maintaining the world’s largest standing army is becoming prohibitively expensive. Nor is the situation likely to improve: After wages, rising pension costs are the second-biggest cause of increased military spending. 

Awakening belatedly to its demographic emergency, China has relaxed its one-child policy, allowing parents to have two children. Demographers expect this reform to make little difference, though. In China, as around the world, various forces, including increasing wages and rising female workforce participation, have, over several decades, left women disinclined to have large families. Indeed, China’s fertility rate began declining well before the coercive one-child restrictions were introduced in 1978. By hastening and amplifying the effects of this decline, the one-child policy is likely to go down as one of history’s great blunders. Single-child households are now the norm in China, and few parents, particularly in urban areas, believe they can afford a second child. Moreover, many men won’t become fathers at all: Under the one-child policy, a preference for sons led to widespread abortion of female fetuses. As a result, by 2020, China is projected to have 30 million more bachelors than single women of similar age.

“It really doesn’t matter what happens now with the fertility rate,” a demographer at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told me. “The old people of tomorrow are already here.” She predicted that in another decade or two, the social and fiscal pressures created by aging in China will force what many Chinese find inconceivable for the world’s most populous nation: a mounting need to attract immigrants. “When China is old, though, all the countries we could import workers from will also be old,” she said. “Where are we to get them from? Africa would be the only place, and I can’t imagine that.”

Much more in the Atlantic 

 Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form. 

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Imbalance, not overpopulation is our problem - Zhang Juwei

Aging, one of China's problems

Even China's mostly optimistic People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, admits the country has a problem with its demographics, after the results of the latest census appeared. Huge imbalances are China's largest problem, tells Zhang Juwei in MSNBC, no longer overpopulation.

“China doesn’t have overpopulation pressure,” said Zhang Juwei, the deputy chief of the Population and Labor Economics Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  “A structural imbalance is the real problem we’re facing.”
By that, Zhang means a whole host of problems that the one-child policy has engendered.

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Zhang Juwei

Key findings of the new census confirmed Zhang’s points, even prompting the official Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, to say “a crisis looms” and giving rise to a catchphrase found in much of the Western media coverage, that “China will grow older before it gets richer.”

More in MSNBC.

Zhang Juwei is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

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'Black children' a rural myth - Zhang Juwei

Zhang Juwei  by Fantake via Flickr

For a long time the existence of 'black children' at China's country side- offspring outside the country's one-child policy and not accounted for in its statistics - were seen as an illegal but useful counter measure for the aging problem and the shortage of cheap labor. But the rural fertility rate is not as high as many hope for, tells CASS-director Zhang Juwei in The Economist. 
The Economist:

The recent CASS report said the rate that would be expected if women had exactly as many children as allowed would be 1.47. The government uses the higher figure believing that many “black children” were missed by censuses. But the report disagreed, saying such serious underreporting was unlikely. It said data showed that the 150m-strong migrant population has a fertility rate of only 1.14 (similar to that of registered urban residents). This belies the common image of migrants as big producers of unauthorised offspring. Zhang Juwei of CASS believes the overall fertility rate is no higher than 1.6.

China cannot avoid its looming ageing problem, but these lower fertility estimates suggest its impact could be greater than officials have bargained for. The CASS study calls for a “prompt” change of policy to get the fertility rate up to around the “replacement level” of 2.1. The problem could be in persuading Chinese to have more children. In cities and wealthier rural areas, surveys found that the number of babies women said they actually wanted would produce a fertility rate well below 1.47.

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Zhang Juwei is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you want to share his insights at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Fat China - Paul French

Paul French        via Flickr

Today saw the long anticipated book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation (China in the 21st Century) by Paul French, on obesity in China. "An in-depth analysis of the growing problem of obesity in China and its relationship to the nation's changing diet, lifestyle trends and healthcare system."
From the announcement:
China's economy has boomed, but a potentially disastrous side effect - along with pollution and a growing income gap between urban and rural regions - is the effects obesity will have on the country's fragile healthcare system. China's urban centres have seen alarmingly rising rates of obesity. Throughout the country, an estimated 200 million people out of a total population of around 1.3 billion were overweight - over 15%.

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From famine to feast in two generations - Paul French

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

Obesity has become one of China's most important problems, tells Paul French, author of an upcoming book  on the issue to Sky News.

"In the last 30 years they've gone from famine to feast in just two generations," explained British economist Paul French, who is soon to publish a book on China's rapid weight gain.

"Availability and accessibility of food are both widespread now. People have more money, and they're just eating more of anything."

China's one-child policy has exacerbated the problem amongst the country's young people. Between 1985 and 2000 the rate of obesity in children jumped nearly 30-fold.

"One child has Mum, Dad and two sets of grandparents," Mr French said.

"It's what we call the six-pocket syndrome. All of that money is being lavished on one little emperor to whom nobody can say no. And it's leading to a rising rate of obesity amongst children."

More at Sky News

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