BEIJING
- Liu Xin is waiting for her only son to return to Beijing, where he is spending his summer vacation with his grandmother in her hometown of Tanchang, 150 kilometers east of the capital.
Her son is nearing his fifth birthday, but she is not thinking of having another child despite the Chinese government allowing couples to have three children, years after the one-child policy that stopped in 2016.
Liu (36-year-old employee of a company in central Beijing) says that there is difficulty in balancing income and expenses, and adds - to Al-Jazeera Net - that raising children in large cities is unsustainable.
In a public survey conducted by Twitter-like Weibo, China's leading social media platform asked, "How many children will you have if birth restrictions are completely liberalised?"
Of the 284,000 who voted, 150,000 said they would not have children, 85,000 were ready to have one, and 39,000 chose two, while nearly 10,000 said they were ready to have three or more children.
steep slope
According to a study conducted by the United Nations, China's population of about 1.4 billion people may almost halve by 2100, and the study indicated a sharp decline in population growth that raises deep questions for the country and its leaders.
While demographic experts believe there is still plenty of time to avoid a population crisis, Beijing will need to take more forceful action in due course;
An aging population, a declining birth rate, and fewer marriages - which are occurring at an accelerating pace - have brought the tipping point to come a decade faster than expected.
By 2050, there will be more than 500 million people aged 60 or over in China (Al-Jazeera)
Debt exceeds income
A total of 7.63 million marriages were registered across China in 2021, a record low over the past 36 years, when the Ministry of Civil Affairs began releasing such statistics.
According to the Evergrande Research Institute, the number of women of childbearing age (20 to 35 years old) will fall to 110 million by 2030, after peaking at 190 million in 1997.
Theories differ as to why Chinese women continue to be reluctant to have children despite the government's announced efforts to improve policies on maternity leave and insurance, as well as to boost taxes and support housing policy. Others believe that it may be due to delaying marriage, which delays births and discourages the desire to have children.
Chen Fei Fei (Beijing resident in her early thirties) says that mortgages have exceeded most income, which is a 30-year repayment cycle, as well as various types of debt;
Such as credit cards and online consumer loans, and Chen added to Al Jazeera Net, "Our desire to give birth is almost non-existent, and we still have a lot of loans to pay off every month, and this is the most effective contraceptive method."
China's total fertility rate (births per woman) was 2.6 in the late 1980s, well above the 2.1 needed to make up for deaths, but dropped to 1.3 in 2020 and just 1.15 in 2021.
aging economy
According to a report by the China Development Research Corporation, by 2050 China will have more than 500 million people aged 60 or older, or nearly a third of the total population projected at that time.
Beijing has acknowledged demographic challenges and announced last year that it would gradually raise the mandatory retirement age, which is 60 for men and 55 for most women.
China's working-age population peaked in 2014, and is expected to shrink to less than a third of that peak by 2100, and economic growth may be affected as the workforce shrinks 15 years from now.
"The horrifying truth is that China is getting old before it gets rich," Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Financial Services Group, said in a research note.
Assistant Professor Tang Yao of Peking University believes that China must stimulate more productivity through technological innovation and deeper reforms to prevent a population crisis, adding to Al Jazeera Net that "China stands on the last threshold of the industrialization period to move into a developed country."