Demography in China: "The number of births has never been so low since 1961"
Young Chinese children on the streets of Beijing on April 28, 2021 (illustrative image).
AP - Ng Han Guan
Text by: Heike Schmidt Follow
4 min
The Chinese population continued to increase in 2020, said Thursday, April 29, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, sweeping in passing information from the
Financial Times
daily
according to which Beijing would, for the first time in 60 years, announce a decrease. of its population below 1.4 billion.
The demographic question is extremely sensitive in China, as explained by Sinologist and emeritus research director at CNRS, Jean-Philippe Béja.
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RFI: The publication of the results of the decennial census is long overdue and is becoming a subject of controversy. Why does this issue seem so sensitive
in China
?
Jean-Philippe Béja
:
The Communist Party must quite simply have a monopoly on information. He cannot stand that others, and moreover a foreign media, announce a decline in the population. On the other hand, as you know, China is racing against time to become at least the second, if not the first world power. So the challenge is to constantly place yourself at the top of the rankings. So, if the population starts to drop, that would mean that India may soon overtake China. This is not bearable in the eyes of the Chinese leaders.
But in reality, it is difficult to understand, since basically the objective of China was to reach a peak of its population and then come down again. But this obviously has a number of economic and social consequences. The problem is in particular the aging of the population. However, what we have seen, and the National Bureau of Statistics (BNS) has not denied it,
is that in 2020, the number of births has never been so low
since 1961. us that Japan was already rich when it got old. China is not really rich yet, so it will be old before it gets rich, and that is a problem.
One of the solutions would be to completely relax the birth control policy. Since 2016, Chinese couples already have the right to have two children, are we heading towards the end of this restrictive policy
?
Encouraging the birth rate actually seems paradoxical, since it should not be forgotten that since 1970 China has been trying to limit births. It is moreover a success of the Chinese Communist Party which, if I may say so, exceeded the plan. If China had stayed on a two or three percent natural growth rate, the country would have two billion people today, and China would be in a much more dire situation. So the question is whether the authorities will end up actually encouraging the birth rate. Obviously, city dwellers - as we have seen with the relaxation of controls - do not want to have more children. Only children tend to have only children, it is well known. So, if we make birth control more flexible,this would lead to an increase in births in more or less underdeveloped regions. However, the Communist Party does not want to see such a development.
Will a decline in population make it harder for China to catch up with the United States economically?
It's very difficult to say!
We know that as countries develop, the birth rate drops.
Indeed, it is said that the aging of the population is causing a society to become less innovative.
But it must also be said that the birth rate in the United States is not doing particularly well either.
It should also be remembered that in the case of China, there was a great fear of overpopulation.
Only 10% of the land is cultivable, so 1.3 billion inhabitants is already a lot.
The problem is indeed the accelerated aging of the population.
How are we going to solve this problem?
This is only possible in the long term.
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China
Demography