Living under China’s COVID-19 restrictions for the past three years had caused Zhang Qi such stress and anxiety that she had considered not having children in China.
When China abruptly ended its “zero COVID” rule last month, allowing the virus to spread freely, the balance shifted to a decisive “No,” according to the Shanghai-based e-commerce executive.
The final straw for Zhang was hearing stories about moms and newborns being unable to see doctors because COVID infections overloaded medical facilities.
A glimpse of the pandemic’s scars on China’s already gloomy demographic picture may be revealed when the country releases its official 2022 population numbers on January 17.
Some demographers predict that China’s population will fall for the first time since the Great Famine in 1961 in 2022, a significant shift with far-reaching ramifications for the global economy and world order.
New births are expected to decrease below 10 million in 2022, down from 10.6 million last year, which was already 11.5% lower than in 2020.
“With this historical turn, China has entered a long and irreversible process of population decline for the first time in China and world history,” said Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California.
“In less than 80 years China’s population size could be reduced by 45%. It will be a China unrecognizable by the world then.”
China’s population will fall by 109 million by 2050 says UN
According to UN analysts, China’s population will fall by 109 million by 2050, more than double the decline predicted in 2019.
While nine of the world’s ten most populated countries are experiencing fertility reductions, China’s 2022 fertility rate of 1.18 was the lowest and much below the 2.1 OECD benchmark for a stable population.
The country, which maintained a one-child policy from 1980 to 2015, formally admitted last year that it was on the verge of a demographic collapse when the National Health Commission stated that the population may begin to decline before 2025.
Going Grey
To encourage people to have more babies, authorities have implemented policies like tax breaks, extended maternity leave, improved medical insurance, and housing subsidies since 2021. So yet, their impact has been little.
Searches for baby strollers on China’s Baidu fell 17% in 2022 and are down 41% since 2018, while searches for baby bottles have declined by more than a third since 2018. Searches for aged care facilities, on the other hand, increased eightfold last year.
In India, Google Trends reveals a 15% year-on-year growth in searches for baby bottles in 2022, while searches for cribs increased nearly fivefold.
The financial burden of children’s education, some of the world’s most stressful college entrance exams, and a nursery enrollment rate of only around 5.5% for children under 3 years – far lower than the OECD average – are key factors influencing the fertility rate, according to the YuWa Population Research think tank this month.
The economic impact of an aging society will be significant
Yi Fuxian, a demographer, predicts that the number of people aged 65 and more would rise to 37% in 2050, up from 14% last year and 5% in 1980. An aging society will have a big economic impact. Due to decreased birth rates, its workforce will not be replenished at the same rate.
“China’s economy is stagnating, revenues are falling, and government debt is rising…China is getting old before it gets rich.”
Murphy, a 22-year-old student at Beijing’s Communication University of China, said the slowing economy would make it impossible for her to have a child.
Last year, the lockdowns slowed the economy to one of its slowest growth rates in nearly a half-century.