Interview
Declining Chinese population: "A failure of Beijing's population policy"
Chinese people on a street in Beijing in November 2022. AP - Andy Wong
Text by: Nicolas Feldmann Follow
4 mins
China, the most populous country in the world, saw its population decline last year for the first time in 60 years.
In 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics (BNS) recorded 9.56 million births for 10.41 million deaths.
Decryption with Isabelle Attané, sinologist and researcher at the National Institute of Demography (INED) in Aubervilliers.
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RFI: China saw its population decline in 2022, how do you explain this phenomenon?
Isabelle Attané:
Since Xi Jinping came to power, demographic statistics published by China have become increasingly rare.
But we have data for the total population.
There is thus a historic decline in the Chinese population with 850,000 fewer people between 2021 and 2022. The synthetic fertility index, that is to say the average number of children per woman, has fallen to around 1 .15 children per woman in 2022, which is a historically low level.
This phenomenon can be explained by various factors.
Young Chinese have less desire to get married: they want to enjoy life more, to develop professionally and tend to marry later and later.
Today, the Chinese state does not offer all the conditions to enable these young people to facilitate the balance between professional life and family life.
In addition, social and economic instability does not promote the engagement of couples in family projects, let's say more ambitious ones.
► To read also: The Chinese population is declining for the first time in sixty years
Was this negative demographic growth foreseeable?
Yes, but China hadn't predicted it this year, it thought the phenomenon would occur around 2030. The reduction in the number of births is a trend that has already been underway for fifteen years.
In 2022, China registered less than ten million births, twice as many as 20 years ago.
For that to be reversed, there would have to be an explosion in the birth rate, which is quite unlikely.
As early as 2016, the Chinese government began to relax the one-child policy and since the summer of 2021, couples are allowed to have three children.
These measures have not had the desired effect, as they take time to bear fruit.
The government is also trying to minimize the costs associated with a child on education or health.
For example, it plans to develop childcare facilities for young children, but all this is not enough.
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Between 200 and 250 million fewer people of working age by 2050
”
With a smaller Chinese population, what can be the consequences for the economy?
China's three or four decades of strong economic growth – that is, from the 1980s through the late 2000s – were largely driven by the steady rise in the number of people of working age , which has allowed the Chinese economy to have a plethoric labor force, which is relatively inexpensive for businesses.
Since the early 2010s, the share of China's population of working-age people has been declining year by year.
This is a real problem for China, it is starting to lack manpower in certain sectors.
Labor is becoming more expensive, so China is becoming less competitive in the industries that have enabled it to grow and open up to the world.
The challenge is here.
You should know that between 2000 and 2050, China will lose 200 to 250 million people of working age.
It is considerable.
How to fill this lack of assets?
China is beginning to legislate on immigration, but it is currently more focused on selective immigration.
It seeks to encourage the arrival in the country of rather highly qualified people.
In particular, there is a fairly vigorous return policy to bring back Chinese students who have studied abroad and are working.
Regarding the immigration of a foreign population from neighboring countries, there is currently no political display in this direction.
Not to mention that the task is colossal.
Imagine that to make up for the entire decline in the Chinese labor force by 2050, it would be necessary to immigrate to China 200,000 million people, these are practically the active populations of Indonesia and Vietnam combined. .
Could this inversion of the demographic curve have consequences for the Communist Party?
This is a failure of China's population policy.
The challenge will be to boost fertility and maintain a certain credibility in the eyes of the population.
One thing is certain: a movement has been born in China, especially among young women, to denounce the fact that they are instrumentalized.
They go from the one-child policy where they are required to have few or almost no more children, then they are made to feel guilty the next day because they don't want to have any more.
A protest movement exists and these birth incentives are not always very well received by young Chinese.
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