China’s baby bust is happening faster than many expected, raising fears of a demographic collapse. And coping with the fallout may now be complicated by miscalculations made more than 40 years ago.
The rapid shift under way today wasn’t projected by the architects of China’s one-child policy—one of the biggest social experiments in history, instituted in 1980. At the time, governments around the world feared overpopulation would hold back economic growth. A Moscow-trained missile scientist led the push for China’s policy, based on tables of calculations that applied mathematical models used to calculate rocket trajectories to population growth.
Four decades later, China is aging much earlier in its development than other major economies did. The shift to fewer births and more elderly citizens threatens to hold back economic growth. In a generation that grew up without siblings, young women are increasingly reluctant to have children—and there are fewer of them every year. Beijing is at a loss to change the mindset brought about by the policy.
Births in China fell by more than 500,000 last year, according to recent government data, accelerating a population drop that started in 2022. Officials cited a quickly shrinking number of women of childbearing age—more than three million fewer than a year earlier—and acknowledged “changes in people’s thinking about births, postponement of marriage and childbirth.”
Some researchers argue the government underestimates the problem, and the population began to shrink even earlier.
Fewer births is good news - a solution rather than a problem. There needs to be fewer humans if we’re to avoid cooking ourselves and sending other species into extinction. We should all be so lucky as China to have this ‘problem’.
Sure, but that’s an environmental solution to what they see as an economical problem.
We need to rethink how economies work in a population shrink.
Who’s going to take care of 4 aging grandparents and 2 aging parents when they all share only one young person between them?
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If everyone is old, who takes care of the old people? And don’t say immigrants, because eventually every country will become old since birth rates are dropping everywhere, including Africa
The government is made up of people. Working age people. The same people that fewer and fewer are existing.
In my own family:
- my grandfather was one of 13
- my Mom was one of 6
- I was one of 4
- the four of us have a total of 3 kids
Clearly you and your siblings need to up your game /s
Far too late for that problem. We’re already in the middle of the next Great Extinction.
China has a surplus of men. Russia has surplus of women. Seems like there’s an easy solution there.
Pretty sure they’re both too racist for that.
You underestimate puberty
It’s not a matter of puberty; it’s a matter of immigration. Which of those countries is going to be willing to accept a mass influx of minorities from the other?
I thought you said it was racism
What, you doubt Russian or Chinese immigration policy could be racist? You think Russia would have absolutely no problem with the idea accepting a whole bunch of Han Chinese men, or that China would have absolutely no problem with the idea of accepting a whole bunch of white Russian women?
Russia is literally offering citizenship in exchange for military service.
China is just beginning to ramp up policy to attempt to address their own population issues.
I absolutely think that all countries are racist. I think it always informs immigration policy.
SPECIFICALLY w/ Russia and China, I think that the mutually beneficial agreement regarding the sustainability of their economies supercedes issues with racism. At least w/ Russia, this is literally evidenced by their immigration policies. I actually don’t know what China’s immigration policies are w.r.t Russians, but I expect they’re roughly aligned with other nations, and they’re not singled out unfavourably.
Let them fight!
This but unironically. The entire east end of Russia is a steamy mix of Slavic and Han Chinese ethnicity.
I wonder where China would be right now population wise if it wasn’t for the one child policy.
Look at the population growth rate of India for an example.
I genuinely wonder how differently this would have played out if China had managed to keep an equal m/f ratio.
