Helen Davidson – The Guardian Jan 17, 2024
China’s population decline has accelerated, with a second year of record-low birthrates.
The total number of people in China dropped by 2.75 million – or 0.2% – to 1.409 billion in 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. The drop surpassed that recorded in 2022, of about 850,000 – the first time the recorded population had declined since the mass deaths of the Mao-era famines.
In 2023, total deaths rose 6.6% to 11.1 million, with the death rate reaching the highest level since the chaos of the cultural revolution in 1974. At the same time, new births fell 5.7% to 9.02 million. The birthrate was the lowest ever recorded at 6.39 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 6.77 births in 2022.
China has for years been battling trends that have led to an ageing population, which were driven by past policies of population control –including the one-child policy – and a growing reluctance among young adults to have children. In 2023 it was overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation, according to UN estimates.
Chinese officials fear the impact that this “demographic timebomb” could have on the economy, with the rising costs of aged care and financial support in danger of not being met by a shrinking population of working taxpayers. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences has predicted the pension system in its current form will run out of money by 2035. By then the number of people in China above 60 years old – the national retirement age – will have increased from about 280 million to 400 million.
A raft of policies have failed to encourage people to have more children, or have not been properly implemented by local governments, which are suffering budget shortfalls after years of running the resource-intensive zero-Covid system.
People frequently cite the high costs of living in China – particularly in larger cities – as well as poor support for women in jobs, as reasons for not having children. Traditional gender roles and familial expectations have also contributed.
“Though cities have released a slew of … policies to support child-bearing women to give birth, the public’s expectation is still not being met,” He Dan, director of China Population and Development Research Center, told state media outlet the Global Times.
On Tuesday, demographers proposed further reforms of fertility support policies, the Global Times reported. Some also drew hope from suggestions that there may be more babies born in 2024 in a post-pandemic baby boom, or because people wished to have children born in the Chinese zodiac year of the dragon, which starts in February.
Online, some Chinese Weibo users said they had anecdotally noticed many more pregnancies around them which they linked to the zodiac year.
Others were more sceptical, saying a single year baby boom would make life difficult for those children who would later sit for China’s highly competitive college entrance exam.
Several discussions suggested new policies or auspicious years would do little to change their minds. “It’s because I love myself more, and I know that if I was born in a family that is not capable of raising and educating a child, I would suffer more, and I would not be able to experience the joy of life, so let’s cut off the suffering from my generation,” said one commentator.
Lol…they are wondering how all this death will impact the ‘economy’….no mention of the empty City complexes built in accordance with economic pseudo science propagated by central banking and to masquerade as growth…
being detonated across the moonscape they call a cuntry…. nor the fact that the authoritarian crime syndicate that owns the shithole spent the last 70 years killing little baby girls and making ‘dumplings’ out of them… having now force injected the rest of the hive with toxic dog shit juice..(having no doubt eaten the dog)… and smothered them with clouds of poison laden smog..
East Asian intellect is an oxymoron..as anyone who has spent any time out there will attest… and life is cheap…
NB: the Chinese are cunning and clannish like jewes..hence the decent people out East giving them the deserving epithet…
the jewes of Asia.
.. and their are a very large proportion of actual chinese ‘jewes’ the kaifeng..Mao himself was probably one of these (his associates that created RED china being the real deal)… stretching back to the old silk roads..and favoured status..as seemed to be customary everywhere else in the whirled..
An aquaintance of mine thinks this goes much deeper and he may be right…equating the khans the chans the cohens.. the first Emperor or ahem…The ‘RED’ Emperor being distinctly un-Asian..and most certainly one of the so called Dragon kings…
Same throughout East Asia, and is it any different here in the US/West? If not for legal/illegal immigration, wouldn’t our situation show the same results?
There is so much chonk that in the Cold War it was not concerned about nukes, knowing that a few hundred million deaths would only help the country
Stand by for Stand by as we used to say before the SHTF. Wait until the hordes of humans figure out the safe and effective vaxxines sterilized most of the adults AND children. Yeah baby,,, these Futher muckers intend to sanitize the planet of humans. From what I see it’s an already done deal.
Nothing can be done to reverse it and worse,,, the sheep are actually assisting.
All I see in that photo at the top are a bunch of morons and overly-compliant cowards.
In China and Japan, the cultures are so exclusive,
That to open their borders is simply too intrusive.
Having been infected with Western consumerism,
The entire world is inflicted with antihumanism.
With women working and motherhood gone,
The schools are empty, no children are spawned.
“Ha, ha”, says the West. “We have the sway.
We cancel our cultures and keep no one away.
We have opened up our nations to fill our ranks,
All to ensure the old will not break our banks.
As there are too many people on the planet,
Holy wedlock for children, we have damned it.
For men and women who will copulate,
Against their fertility we simply inoculate.
Over population though has caused a quirk,
For now people are not needed for work.
They quickly are being replaced by machines,
And that is why we are altering their genes.
Also, we have learned how the galaxies behave,
Where stars in their centers are spun to their graves.
Our huge cities never their numbers can sustain,
All peoples we feed to them, so they never remain.”