China Herald: fertility

Showing posts with label fertility. Show all posts

Thursday, July 18, 2024

Demographic pressure will give China’s women more freedom – Zhang Lijia

Officially China does not allow single women to freeze their eggs and forces them to go abroad or even register children of single mothers to register. But demographic pressure is already changing those restrictions on a provincial level, says author Zhang Lijia in the Guardian who expects more changes to come.

The Guardian:

A study published last year by the economists Ren Zeping and Liang Jianzhang found that more than 65% of 30- to 34-year-olds hoped to preserve their fertility via egg freezing.
But the Chinese government has so far not welcomed this trend. In 2020, the national health commission said that allowing single women to freeze their eggs could give women “false hope” and encourage them to delay motherhood, “which is not conducive to protecting the health of women and offspring”. The topic of relaxing the rules around egg freezing is routinely discussed at China’s political meetings but so far the national policy has remained fixed.
Lijia Zhang, a writer who is working on a book about Chinese women’s changing attitudes towards marriage and motherhood, expects demographic pressures will force China’s policymakers to loosen restrictions. “It is just a matter of time before the authorities will relax the law,” Zhang said. “Without making a song and dance about it, most provinces have allowed single women to register their children and some places even give them maternity benefits.”

Monday, January 30, 2023

Why China’s low fertility rate is a serious problem – Zhang Lijia

China saw for the first time its population drop. Journalist and author Zhang Lijia explains in the South China Morning Post why the government should take this development seriously and what actions it could take. “Leaders will have to learn to treat citizens with respect,” she adds.

Zhang Lijia:

The low fertility rate is China’s long-term time bomb. In the past, the Chinese economy benefited from an abundant and youthful labour force. Now the sharply declining fertility rate, compounded with a rapidly ageing population and longer lifespan, will inevitably cause labour shortages and an economic downturn.
The authorities have to take the matter extremely seriously. A good starting point would be offering better legal protection to working mothers and introducing measures that help them balance work and life, such as longer maternity leave and good childcare facilities while severely punishing those who mistreat them. Pregnant workers are still frequently sacked by employers, and the perpetrators are rarely punished.

I also hope the Chinese government will deal with the matter humanely instead of using coercion or force, such as the forced sterilisation and abortion that supported the one-child policy. Back then, local officials competed with each other in coming up with excessive measures. As a factory worker in the 1980s, I had to visit the “period police” every month to show I was not pregnant.
“China’s current political and economic model is a typical legalist model of ‘powerful government and weak families’,” said Yi Fuxian, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Big Country with an Empty Nest.

“The legalists can enable the country to rise rapidly. But this rise is unsustainable because it undermines family values and unduly restricts individual freedom, which can lead to a decline in population and socioeconomic vitality.”

Legalism, an ancient school of philosophy, emphasises strong state control and absolute obedience to authorities. I doubt the legalists’ heavy-handed way can work well in the long run given that today’s youth are more individualistic and aware of their rights.
The recent protests against excessive anti-pandemic measures are a case in point. It might be difficult for the authoritarian regime to give up the legalist model, but leaders will have to learn to treat citizens with respect.

Yi has this word of warning: “The Chinese authorities need to accept this difficult truth. China is not facing a rise but an existential crisis unseen for thousands of years.”

Friday, August 20, 2010

'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.