CHINA HAS 1.34 billion people, which means nearly one in five of the newly achieved roll-call of seven billion people on the planet is Chinese. But the world’s most populous nation could face a crisis in coming years because more than three decades of the one-child policy have led to a swift ageing of the populace and increased pressure on younger Chinese to care for older residents.
China’s population growth has slowed to around five to six million births a year, and is expected to peak at 1.45 billion in 2030, according to Professor Li Jianmin, director of the Institute of Population and Development Research at Nankai University in Tianjin, one of the country’s leading population experts. India is expected to overtake China as the most populous country by 2050.
Li believes one of the big developments in population policy in coming years will be a change in the one-child policy.
“The one-child policy has led to few births in the last 30 years and slowed the pace of population increase. However, there is more tolerance now of the idea of relaxing the one-child policy, allowing some couples to have a second child. But it will take time to open up the policy,” he says.
Ageing is not the only problem with China’s population. There is also a possible shortage of labour. China’s working population, or people aged from 15 to 59 years old, will fall from today’s 940 million to 750 million. Meanwhile, senior citizens will increase from 178 million to 480 million, from 13.3 per cent of the total population to 34 per cent.
The one-child policy has also led to boys being favoured, especially in rural areas, prompting an alarming shift in the ratio of boys to girls. This could result in a gender gap of about 20 million men.
“In the past, you had to have more children to make sure you were looked after,” says Li. “But the changing economic format means more children does not necessarily mean better potential living standards. At the same time the cost of raising a child is more than ever before, therefore costs act as a limit because most people only want one child, or two at most,” says Li.
There are various exceptions to the one-child policy. People in cities can have a second child if both husband and wife come from one-child families and farm couples are allowed to have another child if their first was a girl. Many ethnic minorities are allowed to have two children, and there are no restrictions on the number of children that Tibetans can have. However, demographers believe these exceptions will have to be drastically expanded or the policy scrapped altogether.
“China is already an ageing society but social policy does not adapt to this fact. The policy now looks too short-term since ageing will be a long-term condition in China for the next 50 years,” says Li.
In its current state, China’s pension system would find it hard to support an ageing population, with a need for more focus on families, rather than individuals, such as offering tax breaks to those caring for ageing relatives.
Zhai Zhenwu, dean of Beijing-based Renmin University’s School of Sociology and Population, says China’s family planning policy had delayed the birth of the world’s seven billionth baby by five years.
“The population of China would now be around 1.7 billion had it not been for the family planning policy . . . and the world’s population would have hit seven billion in 2006,” he says.
According to data, the one-child policy has prevented 400 million people from being added to China’s population.
Broader fears of the inverted pyramid – whereby a single child shoulders responsibility for two parents and four grandparents – is a major headache for the government, particularly as unemployment rises, forcing more and more people to migrate to cities for work. More than 100 million rural Chinese residents will settle in towns and cities in the next decade, according to a government report.
Surveys of Chinese families show they would aim to have 1.7 children on average, while official policy permits 1.5.
“That difference creates an opportunity to exploit the potential for increased childbearing in the near future,” Cai Fang, a director of the Institute of Population Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote in the South China Morning Post newspaper.
“China’s one-child policy has essentially accomplished its initial goal. In 1980, when the policy was formally announced, it explained that ‘in 30 years, as the current, extremely intense problem of population growth abates, an alternate population policy shall be carried out’. That condition has more than been met, legitimising a policy adjustment today.”
But there are broader concerns about what even slower Chinese population growth means as China gets wealthier.
Per capita consumption in China is 20 per cent of that in the US. If the Chinese were to use as much energy per individual as Americans, its total power use would be more than four times that of the US, which would have major repercussions for the world’s natural resources.
