Facing pressure from population decline and aging faster than China, Korea and Japan

NYT “Creating crisis with one-child policy… Late response”

With the announcement that China’s population has shrunk for the first time in 61 years, analysts say it is too late to reverse the decline.

The New York Times (NYT), an American daily newspaper, said that due to China’s strict child restraint policy that has been maintained for decades, compared to the economic development period of Asian countries in similar situations, such as Korea and Japan, there will be pressure decline in the population and aging faster. It was said on the 18th (local time) that
In an analysis article entitled ‘China may have led to population decline and aging crisis itself’, the New York Times reported that China’s population decline has become a reality earlier and faster than experts predicted, and this mainly because of the Chinese government. late response.

The Chinese leadership predicted that the ‘tipping point’ of the population was approaching and came up with various measures such as abolishing the one child policy, but it was not enough to catch up with the pace of population decline and ageing, and the right . time was lost.

In particular, the newspaper noted that the Chinese government has not properly chosen where to prioritize between conflicting policy goals, such as the welfare of the youth and the elderly, social security, and technological and military strengthening, in relation to the crisis of decline population.

Ren Zoping, former chief economist of Hengda Group, said on social media after the population decline statistics were released, “Population is the most important issue in the future, but it is the one that is most easily ignored also.” “We need to think about more active. policies, like securities,” he said.

The fallout from China’s one-child policy, implemented to curb population growth, is expected to continue.

China introduced the ‘one family, one child policy’ in 1978, but when the birth rate dropped significantly, it implemented the ‘two child policy’ in late 2016, and expanded it to three children in 2021, five years lately.

CNA Broadcasting Singapore reported that Chinese people born in the 1980s and 1990s, when the one-child policy was implemented, tended to delay childbirth as they often shouldered the responsibility of supporting their elderly parents alone.

Ding Ding, 37, the father of a 3-year-old daughter, told CNA, “Parents think that having more children means being able to take care of them in their old age, but the younger generation thinks differently.

It’s too hard to raise one child,” she said.

Experts believe that the Chinese government is not properly addressing the core cause of the population decline problem, NYT reported.

Many young couples in China are either childless or trying to have only one child due to rising childcare and education costs and a lack of significant government support.

In particular, women who have to care for both parents while working and raising children are skeptical of the government’s promise to make it easier to give birth and raise children while maintaining regular jobs.

Dong Yige, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Buffalo in the United States, said that China’s fertility policy ignores the various pressures placed on women and does not know the reality faced by rural and working class women in particular.

Michael Beckley, a professor at Tufts University in the United States, also pointed out that “the Chinese government’s population reform plan is nothing more than a drop in the bucket.”

Professor Beckley added, “In China, 5 to 10 million workers will disappear every year and the number of elderly people will increase accordingly. This demographic crisis cannot be compensated by raising the retirement age alone.”

/happy news