China set for historic population decline sped up by Covid traumas

LIVING under China’s stringent Covid-19 restrictions for the past three years had given 31-year-old Zhang Qi enough stress and uncertainty to consider not having babies.

When China abruptly dismantled its zero-Covid regime last month to let the virus spread freely, those thoughts landed on a definite “no”, said the Shanghai-based e-commerce executive. The final straw for her were stories about mothers and babies not being able to see doctors, as medical facilities were overwhelmed by Covid infections.

“I heard that giving birth at a public hospital is just horrific. I really wouldn’t consider having a baby.”

A glimpse of the scars that the pandemic left on China’s already-bleak demographic outlook may come to light on Jan 17, when the country reports its official 2022 population data.

Some demographers expect the data to show the first population drop since the Great Famine in 1961. It would be a profound shift with far-reaching implications for the global economy and world order.

China is on track to see record lows in its birth rate, with fewer than 10 million babies born last year. This was a decline from 10.6 million in 2021, which was 11.5 per cent lower than the figure reported in 2020.

Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, said: “China has entered a long and irreversible process of population decline… In less than 80 years, China’s population could be reduced by 45 per cent. It will be a China unrecognisable to the world then.”

In 2021, the nation’s population increased by 480,000 to 1.4126 billion. The United Nations (UN) predicted that its population would begin declining this year, even as India is expected to overtake it as the world’s most-populous country.

UN experts estimated that China’s population would shrink by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline in their 2019 forecast.

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While nine of the 10 most-populous nations in the world are experiencing declines in fertility, China’s 2022 fertility rate of 1.18 was the lowest among them. It was also well below 2.1, which is the standard for a stable population set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

China, which imposed a one-child policy from 1980 to 2015, officially acknowledged that it was on the brink of a demographic downturn last year, when its National Health Commission said the population may start dropping before 2025.

In October, President Xi Jinping said the government would enact further policies to boost the country’s birth rate.

Going grey

Since 2021, authorities have been introducing measures to incentivise people to have more babies. These included tax deductions, longer maternity leave, enhanced medical insurance and housing subsidies.

But so far, their impact has been lacklustre.

Online searches for baby strollers on China’s Baidu dropped 17 per cent in 2022, and were down 41 per cent since 2018. Searches for baby bottles have also declined by more than a third since that year. In contrast, searches for elderly care homes surged eight-fold last year.

The reverse is playing out in India. Google Trends showed a year-on-year increase of 15 per cent in searches for baby bottles in 2022; searches for cribs rose five-fold.

Think-tank YuWa Population Research said that key factors affecting China’s fertility rate included the financial burden of children’s education, some of the most-stressful college entrance exams in the world, and a nursery enrolment of only 5.5 per cent for children under three, which is far lower than the OECD average.

The economic impact of an ageing society will be significant.

Demographer Yi Fuxian expected the proportion of those aged 65 years and older to reach 37 per cent in 2050. That figure was 14 per cent last year and 5 per cent in 1980. China’s labour force would not be replenished at the same rate, due to declining births.

“Rapid ageing is slowing China’s economy, reducing revenues, and increasing government debt… China is getting old before it gets rich.”

Murphy, a 22-year-old student at Beijing’s Communication University of China, said she would not be able to afford a child due to the slow economy. She declined to give her last name.

Last year, the lockdowns cooled the country’s economy to one of its lowest growth rates in nearly half a century.

“The pandemic reinforced my view,” she said. “Even if I could afford my own living expenses, why would I want to have babies?” REUTERS