China's birth rate hit 60-year-low despite Beijing's efforts to tackle 'demographic timebomb'
The birth rate in China has dropped to its lowest level in more than seven decades, ramping up pressure on the government to find new ways of staving off a demographic crisis.
China clocked 7.52 births per 1,000 people, the lowest since 1949, when Beijing began collating the data after the Communist Party took power.
In total, that amounted to 10.62 million births last year, down 12 per cent, compared to 12 million in 2020, according to Chinese government data.
China’s working-age population is already starting to shrink, squeezed at both ends with fewe babies and a fast-growing elderly population.
Officials are scrambling to stem the impact, encouraging couples to have more children. The challenge is that a smaller labour force – China’s longtime growth engine – will crunch the world’s second-largest economy.
Authorities eased birth limits starting in 2015. But couples are put off by high costs, cramped housing and job discrimination against mothers.
The percentage of people aged 16 to 59, the official working age population, edged down to 882.2 million, or 62.5 per cent of the total, from 63.3 per cent reported in the 2020 census. That is down from 70.1 per cent a decade ago.
Demographers say the working-age share of the population might fall to half by 2050.
End of the one-child rule
In an attempt to address the situation, the government in 2016 scrapped its controversial one-child policy, allowing couples to start having two children. Last year, Beijing loosened restrictions further to permit three babies.
But a high cost of living – especially in urban areas – along with women delaying marriage in favour of career, and cutthroat competition and pressure on parents to ensure children are admitted into the best schools and universities have deterred would-be parents from procreating.
China's birth rate already was falling before the one-child rule, paralleling trends in South Korea, Thailand and other Asian economies. The average number of children per mother tumbled from above six in the 1960s to below three by 1980, according to the World Bank.
Demographers say official birth limits concealed a further fall in the potential number of children per family.
The one-child limit, enforced with threats of fines or loss of jobs, led to abuses including forced abortions. A preference for sons led parents to kill baby girls, prompting warnings millions of men might be unable to find a wife, and fuelling social tension.
New traditions
Weddings have indeed declined for the last eight years, with new marriage licenses hitting a 13-year low at 5.9 million in the first three quarters of this year, according to government data.
At the same time condom sales are booming in China – sales up 15 per cent each year since 2019, valuing the market at £3.8 billion, according to industry data.
The government has also stressed traditional gender roles, banning representations of men deemed too effeminate from television in favour of more manly expressions.
Some localities have even ordered hospitals to stop performing vasectomies to spur pregnancies.
The issue of waning births – and more broadly, a shrinking population – has become so politically sensitive that even academics circulating policy proposals online have been censored in China.
The total population stood at 1.413 billion at the end of 2021, an increase of 480,000 from the previous year, the data showed.
Last week, a high-profile Chinese economist who posted online suggesting the central bank set up a multi-billion dollar “fertility fund” to encourage people to have children, was banned from using his social media accounts.
