| A street in Shanghai, China, May 31, 2021. © Reuters=News1 © News1 Reporter Choi Seo-yoon |
China’s birth rate (the number of babies born per 1,000 population) plummeted to an all-time low last year.
On the 24th, AFP news agency reported that, citing China’s recently published ‘Chinese Statistical Yearbook 2021’, the birth rate across China in 2020 was 8.52.
This is the lowest since the first publication of the China Statistical Yearbook in 1978, and it is a significant decrease from the previous year’s birth rate (10.42).
China’s National Bureau of Statistics said last year’s fertility rate was the lowest since the founding of the Communist Party of China. However, it was higher than Korea’s birth rate (5.3 children) in the same year.
In the same year, the number of marriage registrations was also the lowest in 17 years, and only 8.14 million couples were married.
This could be attributed to the strict lockdown implemented at the beginning of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), but last year in most of China, few places placed restrictions on weddings, AFP reported.
The number of divorces has declined for the first time in 30 years. Analysts say that this is because of the divorce deliberation system that China has implemented since early last year. The divorce deliberation system is a system that requires a 30-day period before filing for divorce.
 |
| Census data from the National Bureau of Statistics are distributed to reporters during a press conference held at the Press Office of the State Council in Beijing. © AFP=News1 © News1 Reporter Dongmyung Woo |
China relaxed the “one child per household” policy introduced in 1976 to allow up to two children in 2016. Recently, the number has been increased to three again after five years.
This is because the population growth rate is significantly decreasing. China’s total population last year only increased by 5.38% compared to 2010. The population grew by an average of 0.53% per year over the past decade.
In particular, the number of the 15-59-year-olds, which is considered the most active period of labor, fell to less than 900 million, accounting for only 63.35% of the total population. This is a decrease of about 7 percentage points (p) from 2010.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP), citing a study by a team at Xi’an Jiaotong University, said that China’s population could decline to half its current level of 700 million within 45 years.
However, some point out that the reliability of the data released by China is low.
Bloomberg reports that China underestimates the number of babies born between 2000 and 2010 by at least 11.6 million. This is because the figures from the annual Chinese statistical yearbook and the census conducted once every ten years were inconsistent.
It is analyzed that this error occurred because of cases in which the birth registration was not registered in order to avoid punishment even after having a second or third child. Considering that 57% of newly registered births are women, it is possible that they did not register the birth of a girl because of their preference for boys.
Meanwhile, on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, marriage-related data from the Statistical Yearbook was widely shared through hashtags. The number of views reached 140 million.
One Chinese netizen complained about the declining number of couples getting married, saying, “It is difficult to even raise a cat, not to mention marriage and childbirth.”
pasta@news1.kr
