The good news, according to Yuan Xin, vice-president of the Population Association of China, is that the reduction in the national headcount this year will be milder due to a cultural preference for having a baby during the Year of the Dragon.
In China, some families prefer to have a baby in the Year of the Dragon as they believe this will make their children become smarter and more successful.
There is numerical evidence for this: an increase in new births in 2012, the last Year of the Dragon.
But the bad news is that, beyond taking advantage of superstition, cunning plans to combat the downward trend are lacking as China is urged by demographic experts to take immediate action to boost its birth rate.
The call comes as figures point to just-ended 2023 as the second year in which China recorded population loss. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday that the country’s population amounted to 1.409 billion at the end of last year, down 2.08 million people (the population of North Macedonia) from a year earlier.
It has been the second year that China recorded a contraction in population after the figure dropped by 850,000 (the population of Comoros) in 2022 from 2021. Last year, India surpassed China to become the world’s largest population. The number of people in India grew 0.81% to 1.429 billion last year from 2022.
“The downward trend in China’s total population is bound to be long-term and become an inherent characteristic,” Yuan of the Population Association said Wednesday.
He said China’s fertility rate, the average number of children born to a woman of childbearing age, is about 1.05% at present, compared with 1.3% in Japan, 1.7% in the United States and 2% in India.
He said the pace of the decline of China’s population will remain mild in the next three decades but the absolute number of the contraction is actually quite significant.
He said it is vital that the government takes action to address demographic problems that will surface in the future. He also warned of the negative impact of an aging population on the Chinese economy.
The number of people aged 60 or above reached 297 million, or 21.1% of the Chinese population, at the end of 2023. The number was 280 million, or 19.8% of the population, at the end of 2022.
“We expect a recovery in new births in 2024, driven by pent-up demand,” Yue Su, principal economist in China at Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), says in a research note. “This has the potential to contribute to a positive population growth trajectory once again.”
”But after a brief rebound in 2024 and potentially 2025, the number of newborns is expected to return to its previous downward trend due to a combination of fewer women of reproductive age and declining fertility rates,” she says.
She says China may not face a “baby crisis” similar to South Korea, which has a fertility rate of 0.9%, but it will be challenging for China to replicate Japan’s stable fertility rate (1.3%).
She says Beijing should take effective policy responses, such as household focused fiscal transfers, enhancements in working conditions for female labor, and improved social welfare coverage for migrant workers.
Policy failure
The Development Research Center of the State Council said in its latest China Development Report 2023 that China’s total population is now at its peak, and it is expected to continue declining for the foreseeable future.
The report predicted that China’s population will fall slightly to about 1.4 billion in 2035 and decrease further to 1.3 billion in 2050.
Last year, many Chinese cities unveiled their measures to encourage young families to have more children. For example, the local government in Zhengzhou, Henan province, said a family will receive a cash subsidy of 2,000 yuan, 5,000 yuan and 15,000 yuan for having one, two and three children, respectively.
But in real practice, many families said they could not receive the subsidy as the Zhengzhou government did not have a budget for this scheme. They also said they could not get the promised extra maternity leaves and other benefits.
Some commentators said young Chinese people tend to delay marriage and childbirth due to income drop and unemployment.
The NBS said the jobless rate of people aged between 16 and 24 was 14.9% in December while that of those aged between 25 and 29 was 6.1%. Claiming to have a review of its statistical method, the bureau stopped publishing the youth unemployment figure last year, after it reached 21.3% in June.
Kang Yi, commissioner of the NBS, said the new youth jobless rate only reflected the 34 million people aged between 16 and 24 who have finished their studies while the 62 million students who are studying and searching for part-time jobs were excluded.
Dragon vs sheep
Alas, there is even a limit to how much superstition can do to counter the overall trend.
Much as they may like giving birth during the Year of the Dragon, there is evidence that some families do not like the Year of the Sheep.
Ma Yan, a researcher at the School of Sociology and Ethnology of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in a paper in 2017 that some Beijing families avoided having a baby in the Year of the Sheep, citing demographic data between 1957 and 2016.
She said it might be because of an old saying of “nine out of ten sheep are unlucky.”
That was originally a political slogan against Cixi (1835-1908), empress of the Qing dynasty, who was born in the Year of the Sheep.
Netizens said the Taiping Rebellion tried to use this slogan to gather some crowds to overthrow the Qing government in the 19th century.
The next Year of the Sheep will be 2027.
Read: Youths’ desperate ‘four no’ attitude worries China
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3