China’s leaders have long known that the country is nearing a demographic crossroads. Policymakers have warned that China must prepare for a slowly shrinking population and an era of fewer workers and more retirees. State media have urged young couples to have two or three children under relaxed rules on family size, to soften the looming economic crisis.
However, the feeling of an incipient crisis grew this month, when the Government confirmed that the country’s population fell earlier and more pronouncedly than expected last year for the first time in 60 years.
Even if Chinese officials have warned of the problem, their preparations have not kept pace with the needs of an aging society, in the opinion of experts and the Chinese people.
China’s abrupt abandonment of “zero Covid” controls exposed a government that was unprepared for an explosion of infections. And, similarly, mounting demographic pressures may reveal a government that has not done enough to avoid difficult decisions in the coming decades. Among the demands of caring for young and old. Between paying for social welfare and developing China’s technology and military might.
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has tried to address the economic and social pressures of a shrinking society by lifting limits on family size. He heralded a new phase of “high quality” growth less dependent on the legions of cheap and plentiful migrant workers from the countryside.
“I would like to have a child, but the pressures of life are too much,” said Wu Yilan, 34, a shopkeeper in Beijing.
China has reached a turning point: its population fell by 850,000 in 2022, with more deaths than births for the first time since the famine of the 1960s.
In 2016, Beijing eased the “one child” policy that had been in place for more than 30 years, allowing families to have two children. In 2021 it raised the limit to three.
Even so, most couples are still limited to having only one child, while two is common in the countryside. Young people, especially women, are skeptical that the government makes it easier for them to have children and work.
Chinese lawmakers neglect broader pressures on women, especially those from rural and working-class backgrounds, said Yige Dong, a sociology professor at the University at Buffalo in New York State. Families face intense pressure to get children into better schools, with much of the burden falling on mothers, who are also expected to care for aging parents and in-laws.
A shrinking society is far from unique to China, even in Asia. Still, China’s tight restrictions on family size in recent decades mean the country is facing these pressures in its economic takeoff long before Japan or South Korea.
The resulting economic and demographic pressures will erode China’s strength for decades to come and could encourage its leaders to become more aggressive before they feel their national power has waned, said Michael Beckley, an associate professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts. .
Beijing has rolled out policies to encourage the expansion of care for the elderly and promised more social support for women who want to have children. As citizens have repeatedly expressed their public anger over sexual harassment at universities, businesses and the media, the government has also vowed to crack down.
While Xi has repeated Mao’s dictum that “women hold up half the sky,” he has also encouraged respect for traditional family roles.
“Women should consciously shoulder the burden of caring for the elderly and raising the young and educating the children,” she said in 2013.
But framing China’s demographic pressures as a matter of attitude distracts from deeper social and economic pressures, Dong said.
“On the one hand, China talks about this as a crisis of a decline in the fertility rate, and on the other hand, they are cracking down on feminism,” she said. “With those two things in contradiction, how can you convince the next generation of young women to get married?”
By: This article was written by Chris Buckley, Joy Dong and Amy Chang Chien
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6545260, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-25 21:40:07
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