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| Newborn babies in a maternity hospital in Fuyang in central China's Anhui province. Getty Images-SCMP |
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During the over three decades that Beijing's ruthless one-child policy was enforced, the target was simply to bring down the size of the population and slow its growth. China has now reached the goal, but there is little reason to celebrate.
By the government's own estimates, its infamous family planning policy had reduced the number of births by 400 million. In other words, had China not imposed forced sterilization, hefty fines on "additional births", and years of propaganda about the merits of having one child only, the nation would now have hundreds of millions more citizens aged between 10 and early 40s ― the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces of countless families.
To be sure, with or without an extreme birth control policy, the demographic structure in China will still change, with fewer babies and more pensioners, as a result of longer life expectancy, increased income levels, improved female education, and shifting lifestyle among the younger generation - just like how it is in developed countries.
But China's family planning policy has quickened the process and brought forward the challenges, forcing the country to deal with a population that is "getting old before getting rich".
Given the size of its population, China is walking into an unprecedented challenge. Births have dropped to a level unseen since the Great Famine. Nearly one in three people in China will be aged above 60 by 2035. All these are set to have a profound impact on China's economy and society, and the country is ill-prepared.
A review of development plans by local Chinese governments shows that many are still making plans based upon the wrong assumption that there will be a steady influx of migrants, that the success of Shenzhen in the 1980s and Pudong in 1990s can be replicated because "if we build, people will come".
Industrial estates, residential blocks, shopping malls and new schools are still loved by local government officials across the country, but the harsh reality is that China is running out of workers and consumers to fill those planned spaces.
Many of the country's fancy infrastructure projects, from high-speed railways to new airports, will soon become a burden without enough users to support their continuous operations.
Many of China's local universities and colleges will quickly become redundant because there are not enough children: in 2023, the country will have 11.6 million new tertiary graduates, but only about 10 million births.
But while China probably has an oversupply of high-rise residential buildings with two-bedroom flats, the country is in dire need of elderly care facilities and hospital beds to cope with a greying society.
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| A nurse gives a Covid-19 vaccine shot to an old woman at a community health center in Nantong in eastern China's Jiangsu province. AP-SCMP |
As the recent weeks have shown, China's healthcare system is facing a grim test. In the wake of the country's abrupt end of its zero-Covid-19 policy, an immediate wave of infections has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums.
Apart from insufficient preparation, one reason is the high percentage of senior citizens among those who caught the coronavirus, particularly in large cities. A society that has pensioners make up between a quarter to a third of its population will always be vulnerable to public health challenges, and the pandemic is a fresh reminder.
For decades, China's demographic situation has been a blessing for the country's turbocharged economic development. When foreign capital poured into the coastal area, it immediately found a steady labor supply that was reliable and disciplined. And when China decided to privatize the housing market, hundreds of millions of Chinese moved into cities and created demand for homes.
That is no longer the case. Saying that China's future is "doomed" because of its rapidly ageing population might be too strong of a word, but it should be fair to say that the population crisis will start to bite soon. (SCMP)
Read the full story at SCMP
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