My Take | 2022 to be remembered as the year that China’s population peaked and its demographic crisis began
- China’s family planning policy has accelerated the country’s demographic challenges, forcing it to deal with a rapidly ageing population
- The pandemic is a reminder that a society where pensioners make up a large part of the population will always be vulnerable to public health challenges
The year 2022 has been notable for many things, one of them being the “official” peak of China’s population size. From this year onwards, the total number of people in China will gradually become smaller annually.
During the over three decades that Beijing’s ruthless one-child policy was enforced, the target was simply to bring down the size of the population and slow its growth. China has now reached the goal, but there is little reason to celebrate.
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Population decline in China raises concerns of economic implications
By the government’s own estimates, its infamous family planning policy had reduced the number of births by 400 million. In other words, had China not imposed forced sterilisation, hefty fines on “additional births”, and years of propaganda about the merits of having one child only, the nation would now have hundreds of millions more citizens aged between 10 and early 40s – the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces of countless families.
To be sure, with or without an extreme birth control policy, the demographic structure in China will still change, with fewer babies and more pensioners, as a result of longer life expectancy, increased income levels, improved female education, and shifting lifestyle among the younger generation – just like how it is in developed countries.
But China’s family planning policy has quickened the process and brought forward the challenges, forcing the country to deal with a population that is “getting old before getting rich”.
Given the size of its population, China is walking into an unprecedented challenge. Births have dropped to a level unseen since the Great Famine. Nearly one in three people in China will be aged above 60 by 2035. All these are set to have a profound impact on China’s economy and society, and the country is ill-prepared.
A review of development plans by local Chinese governments shows that many are still making plans based upon the wrong assumption that there will be a steady influx of migrants, that the success of Shenzhen in the 1980s and Pudong in 1990s can be replicated because “if we build, people will come”.
