“Chinese officials are reportedly considering ending the country’s restrictions on childbirth and will start introducing policies to encourage having children in response to slowing economic growth and an aging population, The Wall Street Journal reports.
At least one policy maker told the newspaper that officials in Beijing are currently discussing whether to end the restrictions on births once the current five-year economic plan ends in 2025. This person said that China will most likely start by getting rid of the restrictions on the number of births in provinces where the birthrate is the lowest in the country.
A recent census showed that China had 12 million births last year, a decline of 18% from the 14.65 million born the year before. China’s population, which is about 1.41 billion in total, only grew by 72 million over the last ten years.
The census also showed that China is approaching a historic drop in its population, prompting the country’s ruling Chinese Communist Party to announce that couples will be allowed to have up to three children, instead of the previous two-child limit that replaced the one-child policy about five years ago.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Yi Fuxian, researcher based in the United States who has been a vocal critic of China’s policies towards population growth. “It signals how concerned [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is.”
Read more: China May Lift Birth Restrictions by 2025 | Newsmax.com“
Comment: “Send us more Japs!” transmitted US Marine Major Devereux from Wake Island after he and his men had repelled several landing attempts. Don’t kid yourself. If the Chinese government/CCP relaxes these laws because they think there should be more Chinese your children or grandchildren will face them in battle somewhere, someplace.
The phenomenon of rapidly falling birth rates seem universal but the Chinese Communists are unwilling to accept that. Why? pl
Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be bucking the trend of falling population. Europe will “benefit” from all that cheap labor heading their way the next 50 years or so.
Not sure Gucci clad, Manalo Blahnik shod Chinese women today will go back to becoming mere “birthing persons”, as portrayed by Pearl Buck in The Good Earth.
Breeders Unite!
Deap. We already see this in America. In 2 generations (50 years), we have seen significant retreat in Feminism. The socially-conservative (stay-at-home motherhood) are out-breeding the progressives. We see that in more mothers wanting to stay at home.
Without immigration, progressives would have been demographically-politically irrelevant.
WSJ implies Xi is worried about the Rust Belt in NE China. They are still stuck in a Maoist economic never-neverland. So the proposal is being shaped towards opening up birthrates in the NE to lure young entrepreneurs and engineers to that area. And perhaps NOT giving the same three babies/couple to rural China so as to prevent overpopulation there, which could promote poverty.
Seems clear to me that the provinces with the lowest birthrate are in the NE. Not only is it a rust belt where people vote with their feet by leaving and seeking jobs elsewhere. But it is cold as hell and many have migrated to warmer areas further south. Here is a link to a 2018 article on China’s Rust Belt.
“China’s north-eastern citizens feel the same sense of grievance and abandonment by elites as those in Detroit, the north of England, northeast France and East Germany. They may not have an electoral outlet for their rage but they express their anger in their own way. This is usually done through illegal strikes, a vast grey-economy network or voting with their feet and leaving the region altogether.”
Well worth even a short visit to the NE China Harbin Ice and Snow Festival – one of those global must see events – one can make a fairly reasonable short trip from the West Coast US – via South Korea and direct on to Harbin, avoiding any stopovers in Beijing and internal travel to Harbin, which is the more typical travel package to this Festival..
https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/harbin-ice-and-snow-festival.htm
(not a commercial endorsement, just presented for photo values only) – We arranged our trip on our own – Korean Air – Accor hotel downtown Harbin. Basic ,but well located and wonderful dining choices and sights all walkable plus a tourist desk to arrange transit to the main Ice Festival itself. Other venues like the Snow Sculpture and pedestrian streets and parks are close to the hotel.
Coming in from the Harbin airport there are rows and rows and rows of very tall high-rise apartment buildings, all empty and dark – over-built for the population expansion that had apparently never come. This was several years ago, one wonders at their occupancy now.
But as specialty tourist destination, the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival remains a top draw, though virtually no westerners present. If there was a tall blond to be seen, it was more likely a Russian left over from the Trans-Siberian Railway days that founded this NE Chinese- Russia border city in the first place.
I assume this ice and snow carving spectacular will be featured at the China Winter Olympics and it does put this China rust belt section of the country on the map for just this one event alone.
At the rate we’re going our grandchildren won’t be facing them in battle because they’ll own us. By that I mean we are on a trajectory of national suicide if you extrapolate going forward with social, cultural, and economic trends in the United States. I don’t like it at all, but this current process of decay has too many historic precedents, suggesting it may be irreversible, for it to be taken lightly.
Of course the population question seems to me self evident. One kid per couple was a response to burgeoning population of people who didn’t have much productive stuff to do, but now with a growing economy they can’t afford to have the population become top heavy with old folks.
A.Pols
That would be a benevolent interpretation of their intentions.
A. Pols,
“they can’t afford to have the population become top heavy with old folks.”
They just managed a global release, ‘accidently’, of a genetically modified virus which primarily kills old people. It also managed, with the help of freindly authoritarian governors, to destroy 40% of America’s small businesses. What did it actually do inside China?
Fred; What you say MIGHT be true, but it’s far from established fact…
And as for benevolent interpretations, yes maybe so, but it’s also true that countries (and individuals) do things for reasons of their own that may negatively impact others, but it’s also true that those actions may not be calculated to harm other parties. For myself as a business person, I’ve had competitors do things that syphon business away from me, but I’d be unduly obsessed and a bit paranoid if I thought they were doing so just to harm me…
A. Pols,
The percentage of small businesses may not be 40, but destroyed by government actions they were. The dead are still dead, too.
“The phenomenon of rapidly falling birth rates seem universal but the Chinese Communists are unwilling to accept that. Why?”
The answer is obvious to anyone capable of envisioning their society beyond their own lifetime. Birth rates below the replacement rate not mitigated by immigration or some other factor will lead to societal collapse. Increased governmental support for families doesn’t seem to be the answer. Many European governments have greatly increased incentives for larger families, but the people just don’t want large families. They just want a higher standard of living. Enjoying children and passing down the family name do not figure into that higher standard of living. I have no idea if China can get past that dilemma.
Which societies have ever collapsed due to Low birth rates?
America with 150 million Americans in 1950 certainly wasn’t a failed or collapsing state. There’s no reason to think we will collapse if immigration rates were zero for a couple decades and our population went down in total numbers.
It’s not the size of the population as much as the median age that matters. A declining population is associated with a rising median age, less able to take care of itself.
Now the mystery to me is why is Taiwan relatively young compared to Japan while both have the same very low birthrates and virtually no immigration, Logan’s Run?
Japan – 49
Taiwan – 42
U.S. – 39
China – 38
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_birth_rate
If the Chinese numbers are like what you see in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. It will impact the economic place of China in the world. They could end up like Japan where the individual Japanese citizen gets wealthier but the GDP of the nation stagnates or declines which impacts the amount of money for defence and soft power. New ideas for tech or science is rarely made by the age group 60+.
-the South Korea example.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200826000726
The EU is facing the same long-term challenge with the added problem of the non-European element steadily raising share of the population. Nuclear powers like Russia and France could end up with Muslim majority populations during the next century
“The phenomenon of rapidly falling birth rates seem universal but the Chinese Communists are unwilling to accept that. Why? pl”
Because assuring the generational reposition rate is the only way to assure social beneffits like pensions and health care for all. I do not think this has anything to do with panning of war.
On the other hand, it seems to me the Chinese, wisely, try to assure the generational resposition rate is provided by ethnic Chinese, born and raised under communist system and traditional Chinese culture, guaranteeing this way not only the continuation of thei ancient civilization´s features, but also social cohesiveness and in the end strong union under the flag in case of conflict.
National strategy, long term planning, full Chinese, no more.
As Biden stated he does on beahlf of US citizens after the Geneva Summit, this is not against any people or country, but in favor of Chinese citizens and system survival, one guess…
Desay
It does not matter if they are planning for war. The direction of their national ethos leads to wars of conquest and the extra people will ne expended in wars.
But, how are you so sure about their national ethos?
How many wars the Cihinese have started during the last decades?
I think it is not necessary finding three feet to the cat, imo, their national goal is erradicating poverty and since they managed to produce huge wealth, they have no other but to expand investing out of their borders…
The US did the same after WWII, didn´t it?
That you agree with their social credit system or not, is secondary, as that should worry mainly the Chinese citizen living under that system/rule..
We do not agree with Saudi Arabia dictatorial medieval system and then nobody in the “free world” says a wordv unless who is killed is a CIA asset..
Just these past days KSA executed a young Shia guy after having passed some a decade or so in KSA jails for expressing dissent while in university at 17…No woke, traditional conservative or libertarian constitutionalist said a word of condemn…
Yet KSA we know funded AQ and IS and meddle suystematically in foreign countries internal affairs…
The Chinese spy abroad? Yes, they do, as they do all countries who have any strategy of national security.
As not in vain he said Sun Tzu, “an army without spies is like a blind and deaf man”…
This is why I find so ridiculous when new appear on that Merkel or whomever in NATO got horrorized to know she/he was being spied all along by an ally…( ahhh!!! )
Israel spies every minute on the US…yet a major part of US population would never thought Israel is preparing a war on the US ( although other more minded people would even consider they have been at war with the US since their inception…but…well…what was the Epstein thing just about in the first place?)
Desayuno con Diamantes
Do you not tire of returning endlessly with bogus names. “Breakfast at Tiffany” Really? Your ignorance of the nature of communism is appalling.
It sounds like abolishing the two-child policy hasn’t helped, so why would a three-child policy matter? More Chinese women seem happy to push against tradition and pursue a career, thereby delaying childbirth and lowering the country’s fertility rate. A modernizing China will face the same problems we face: How many women or couples will accept a lowered earning potential over their lifetimes to devote more time and money to additional children? Unless China imposes strict regulation on birth control access and does an about face on abortion the only population increase will occur within the ruling class and the poor, but many poor people in rural areas were already exempt from the one-child policy.