Is China heading for a demographic crisis? | Inside Story
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- Опубликовано: 23 май 2024
- China's population has declined for the first time in more than six decades. The birth rate slowed to 6.77 babies per 1,000 people in 2022.
Compounding the issue is that deaths outnumbered births.
Economists warn that the low birth rate and rapidly ageing population will have far-reaching effects - not just locally, but on the global economy.
What is behind this downturn?
And what will it take to reverse the trend?
Presenter: Sohail Rahman
Guests:
Einar Tangen - Senior Fellow, Taihe Institute
Winnie King - Senior Lecturer in Chinese International Political Economy, University of Bristol
Guido Cozzi - Professor of Macroeconomics, University of St Gallen
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#China #ChinaBirthRate #ChinaDemographics #ChineseEconomy
Looking back, China would have been better off opting for a two-child policy in 1979, considering having two children per family is the minimum necessary to maintain population replacement levels, combined with having a T'ang Dynasty cosmopolitan approach to foreigners and immigrants.
安史之乱，五胡乱华，都是开放的结果。中国不需要移民
As an ex-pat married to a Chinese citizen for nearly 10 years and with a single child, I wanted to add my 2 cents on why couples are not having more children in China. At least in the province of Anhui where I am living in, is that the policies are contradicting each other related to population growth and seriously lack standard facilities to promote growth.
Although families are encouraged to have more children, up to 3, local policies are often contradicting the ability to do so.
Supporting facilities for families and services needed for couples to have a family are already limited, unregulated, or simply not available.
Have more kids, but all the things you need to do that we won’t provide more of and you know what, just for giggles we will reduce the ones you already have such as:
1. Municipal Policy changes have been shutting down private -Daycares-kindergartens-early childhood education businesses-training centers and workshops for students from pre-K to grade 12 etc.
While not allowing new licenses to be obtained or expanding remaining facilities, many communities are extremely underserviced and what is available; has increased in price or has no vacancies.
2. General Health care services -Limited overcrowded hospitals- next to zero private family doctors. Recently it took me 3-4 hours to check my daughter’s eye prescription and we arrived 40 minutes before opening. Local Hospitals are even worse and the only option if you have other health issues.
3. Real estate prices are extremely high as noted in the video which seems to be happening globally.
4. Really any public service is just as bad; often many government offices have different requirements and policies that clash with each other, regulations, and standards differ, etc.
5. Younger generations have been pushed so hard from k to university to get educated even studying majors in areas they despise. Causing burnout and questioning why they did it, to begin with. Many young adults want time to enjoy life and experience it.
6. International Nanny and other care providers were removed, and replaced by local untrained, and unregulated.
7. Financial burden is real, with 4 grandparents and additional children to take care of when most have little to no savings. ( as stated most can support themselves until a serious illness occurs)
China needs to align all policies in the same direction and develop complete internal standards nationwide and make it stable for young couples to have children. Population decline is happening in many countries, China is one of the countries that can turn it around faster than any other .. IF they can manage their policies properly.
wow thanks for sharing
1. private daycare centers with no relevant licenses are shut down. people there are the ones you describe in 6.
2. i am not sure which city in anhui you are living in, however, situation in all hospitals in china's big cities are similar. you can choose private hospitals. it is definitely easy mode. as for private family doctors, you know the population in china, right?
3. younger generations pushed hard to in studying can be seen everywhere on the earth.
4. i see lines like "policies contradicting each other", but no detailed examples.
5. you think you know the country well as you've been here for over 10 years. but all you have to this place is ***. wish you a happier and more relaxing life here. or you have another choice, please just choose it.
China's 1.7 fertility rate is on par with virtually every other industrialized country. I'm curious to know what the Chinese policymakers are doing wrong that every other first world nation isn't also doing.
@@jiagu139 why did you get so salty when a few facts about China were pointed out? How much is the CCP paying you?
@@jiagu139Relax cowboy he was just telling us his experience
Oh god...isnt that good? 1,4 billion People? I dont think its a crisis that they lost a few millions
it is a HUGE problem
Most of my cousins in China have 3 kids and some lucky ones stopped at 2 after they got a son. The minute when a married Chinese couple gets a son is usually when they stop having kids. My cousins who have more than 2 are the ones who kept having girls for the first 2 and they wanted a son. So, it depends, if you interview couples in China who already have a son, they will tell you "one child" is enough. If you interview one of my cousins who just had her second daugthers, she will tell you she will have another child.
Half Chinese kids get treated poorly from personal experience.
Japan lost 650,000 ppl in 2022. Their population is only 120 million.
Peter Zeihan has been saying this for 10 years now. One just needs to read his books ,or look at his seminars on RUclips.
Zeihan was wrong back in 2010. But his followers usually bring up his prediction about Ukraine.
Zeihan fans always cherry pick, a bit of digging and Zeihan's house of cards comes down. His fans won't admit it though. That should've cleared it up for you.
@J X Seems like hes right about China you Chinese bot. I'm enjoying seeing china just crumble.
my goodness who would believe it? hardship and discontent breed nothing more than more discontent. where will future consumers come from?
no need over worry for at least for 10-20 years future , there are still plenty people``
If you look around, I would never think of having children if you see how life is no longer like before _ there were always family to nurture children but now homes are empty with parents at work, babies and children in day care and grandparents in the hands of nursing homes. So why bother. Work to pay taxes and give yourself less stress. No family means you don't need any goals in life maybe except buy a sprawling home, a car, pay insurances and interests and save for a good meaningful holiday.
Family is always a goal
I'm living just fine without kids, traveling the globe when I saved up
@@___beyondhorizon4664 if u ask no family is an empty life
@@Rcampo42 but I thought people have been taught that individualism and freedom and democracy are the holy grail, an kind of community bonding or even family is akin to communism and socialism
@@Rcampo42 l I've been living an interesting life. No student debt because I worked to pay for tuition,it took longer to graduate but I don't worry about student loans. After working full time in my field, I saved enough to travel the world once a year for 3 weeks. Traveled to 5 continents, work trip to Paris & Columbia in 2013. Teaching in China from 2009-2013 during the economic crisis. Life is full of adventure during my travel. Changing diapers and transporting kids to school is not my thing. Hiking at midnight for 3 hours to reach the top of the Moses mountain at Mount Sinai,, Egypt, watching sunrise at 5am is breath taking.
Wonderful
the world is healing ❤️
That was a wonderful program.
10 child minimum policy must save the motherland
Same situation here in Thailand, probably more severe.
Deaths has exceeded births since 2021. The population is expected to be only half of today's number in 2100.
@@ksrithan Trying to predict birthrates 40 years into the future is a sketchy business. When I was born, we were predicting 10-12B people globally inside the next century. Now we're predicting closer to 5-6B. What will the birth rate look like in 2050 or 2080? Incredibly hard to say.
I'll never understand why this is cause for alarm. If people were straight up dying of disease or murdering one another in a war or starving to death, a multi-billion person population decline would be horrendous. But if folks are just... not having as many babies? Perhaps this is a soft-crunch from economic pressures. Perhaps people waiting until they're 30+ to have kids, when each individual is living longer and consuming vastly more than their historical peers, is a genuinely healthy and good way to normalize human population without devastating the global ecology.
Fertility rates across all industrialized countries in the world drop. It just happens that China did the one child policy for way too long
If this situation could happen in Bangladesh............ 😥
Thank God they slow down!!!!!
Its time to reduce income inequality globally.
Lets start with you giving away your income first.
How?
@@theloniousm4337 wow I didn't know I have so much of money to spare.
@@zoolander7201 cause you're a loser, and you envy other people who are more successful than you, just like all leftists
China's population has been falling for 4-5 years according to bits of info from the 2020 census
Overcount of 100 million at least!!
Congrats India
The days of abundance is approaching for China…
Who cares if their population was overstated?
If it is really overstated, it means China's per capita GDP is higher than what we see in the data.
Hmm, so apparently, it's easier to tell people not to have children and force women to have abortions than it is to encourage women to have more children than they want to have. These unintended consequences are hilarious 😂
Women are not baby factories. It's not unique to china. As women get more educated, especially in asia, they're choosing to marry later and have fewer or no babies at all. As long as capitalism keeps people barely surviving, people wouldn't want their kids to grow up without good resources like good education, good healthcare etc
@@freemanol At no point did I say women are baby factories. My point was about how China's one child policy and the brutal enforcement of it was such a success that it had unintended consequences that will hit China way earlier than it would have had China not forced abortions on millions of women and restricted the reproductive rights of the previous generation. Yes, women do choose to have fewer babies as they get more educated and richer. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is hitting China before they got rich. So in that respect China's own population decline is unique to China. And now China's authorities are realising this and discovering that restricting reproductive rights is a lot easier than encouraging women to have more kids.
What do you mean unintended consequences? The one child policy was meant to slow breakneck population growth and it worked as intended. Without the policy, China would have had about 2-2.5 billion people right now and would not have been able to develop as fast as it has. The problem with low birth rates is occurring in all developed economies, immigration masks it in the US and Europe (Obviously last couple of years of enhanced lockdowns in China are an anomaly but the trend is the same).
@@tallest4eva The unintended consequences of the one-child policy are that China's population is now set to shrink before the country gets rich. Yes, developed countries also have a declining population but the difference is these countries are richer. They will be in a much better position to afford the huge health and social care bill that will come with an ageing population and a smaller workforce. Developed countries can also slow the effects of an ageing population with immigration. China on the other hand still only has a GDP of about $12,000 a year and hands out about a minuscule number of permanent residencies every year. A country's destiny lies in it's human capital. That's why countries with an increasing population are set to become more important in the coming decades.
@@tallest4eva Not entirely clear if it worked as intended or if industrialization and a sharp drop in infant mortality simply did in China what it did for every other industrialized nation. When people are living longer, consuming more, and functioning healthy well into their senior years, perhaps we aren't under the same biological pressure to having twelve kids before we turn 40 in hopes that 3 of them might survive to see adulthood.
I'm not even clear what the "problem" with low birthrates is, long term. We're looking at an overweight elderly population for a generation. And then we'll settle back into a more normal replacement pattern as labor demand exceeds population size and economic pressures on young people decline.
In this capitalist and consumerism based economy, the world will never have enough people. Imagine having 1. 4 billion people and still thinking that their aren't enough people. No worries if the large number of people leads to famine or over extraction of resources as long as the wealthy 10% can have cheap labour to exploit.
And you are not "exploiting cheap labor" as you comment on a RUclips video on the internet on your smart phone or computer inside your detached home or cozy apartment building in your cozy pajamas eating and drinking merily? You lack personal awareness in your hubris and virtue signaling.
It’s not a too much people problem it’s a not enough younger people problem. No economy runs off of just 70-80 year olds you fool.
@@DatPiffy You fool, economy can run on 70-80 years old people, but there is low growth/ no growth in that economy. If there are fewer people in the job market, than you don't necessarly need higher gdp every year to find employment of the younger people.
However, in this capitalist era, you have to have growth in economy. Doesn't matter if the population and the environment is suffering in the process. The people must pop out baby so that the country has enough tax mule to carry governments burdern. More younger people needed to fund the well fair of the old, next generation you again need more younger people to fund for more older people, and again and again and again.
Is this really a good system or a healthy process? No talk about having a more educated and productive younger workforce, improvement in manufacturing process, efficient management system in companies, advancement in science and technology but all focus on popping out more babies so that the ruling class has more people to turn against each other and force them to work for unlivable wages.
i envy those chinese unique kids. they inherit the house, infrastructure all made, girls dont get pregnant. china with 500 million will be paradise on earth.
village need more money to spend on Infrastructure
Some mammals are notoriously difficult to breed in a cage with minimal freedoms, frequent physical abuse, emotional abuse, constantly living in fear, bashed, shot at for howling and draconian restrictions, many humans are no different, China, the West, anywhere. Why bring another generation into the cage to continue the humiliation and suffering. The cage for Humanity has become smaller with every year to the point that the very angry wolves will probably rip the keepers apart in a revolution that will made the French and Russian revolutions look rather civilised. Expecting humanity to be nationlistic is like expecting the wolves to be proud with it's little cage. Humanity lost it's way well over a century ago when the Linearist starting pushing out the Lateral thinkers as the Russian economist Kondratiev wrote about, but Stalin had him killed.
Go to a Third World country where the birth rates are skyrocketing
Debbie Downer over here.
Y'all are too weak and cowardly to fight for a better future for your children
Attempting to reverse large scale demographic decline is similar to attempting to divert the course of a very large earth-bound asteroid: you have to start trying *at least* twenty years ago.
just like how a large earth bound asteroid can be diverted with a huge amount of energy, reversing the demographic crisis will require huge amounts of changes which they dont want to do
The only solution is immigration, but that doesn't seem likely given the current policies.
1.5 billion people 😂😂😂😂😂 is low population
The issue is the speed of the decline.
nobody said that, you are the clown here lol, offensed about low birth rate news lol.
@@pabloagusti5104 the issue is to demonaz the country, false propeganda
And the makeup of the age distribution of those people
1.2 or 1.3..... even the own ccp they were counting the numbers wrong i think they are around 1.3 bllion .and is not the is low population is that is an old population do you get it? i f you want i can explain to you more extensively
Food prices going up no body make video on it
If this woman from Bristol said that China is a developing, not developed world, what does she mean? If China is not developed, how come they are helping other countries to develope? If China is not developed who is? and who can, please, furnish me with an idea or example of a developed country?
The point to consider is China's large population. As Deng Xiaoping said "let some people/provinces get rich first". Yes, China has progressed fast in technology and lots of different areas, but it is still not a fully developed nation. China managed to take out 800,000 million people out of abject poverty because the Government and the Chinese people wanted to and worked hard to accomplish this! The key now is to prevent these same people from falling back into poverty. After the coastal eastern provinces prospered and developed, they started helping the western regions develop. It does show that the Chinese government and people want to fulfill more equality in their country. As to the question of China helping other countries to develop, China has been doing this even when they themselves were dirt poor. Do your research and see what they did in Africa and are thus continuing to help Africa even now with infrastructure, agricultural, technical etc. development. At this point, China is still a developing nation but well on its way to becoming a developed nation in the future. We talk about the 21st century being an Asian one. Down the road, there is the possibility of there being an African Century? Hope so. That will be good for all humanity! As the Chinese say, "a community with a shared future for humanity".
@@jademoon1530 For all this, I personally consider China a perfectly developed country. If China in all these capacities, is not yet developed, which other country is developed judging by that woman's point of view. Because I believe she considers some countries like America, the EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, Britain and South Korea, to be the developed countries..And none of these countries has more of what it takes to be considered a developed country than China has. That's what's I mean.
China hoodwinked the world with developing to get more breaks from tariffs
Ethnic cleansing of its own citizens (Uighurs) has repercussions.
What about the tibetans
My Chinese friend is Uyghur Muslim, she and her husband already have 3 kids, I met two of them in 2019 when I visited them in Xinjiang where our mainstream media in the West are spreading this ethnic cleansing narrative. Until you visit China, you won't really understand how our mainstream media are deliberately misinforming our audience, don't know for what purposes, politics and ideology must be parts of them. My advice is go to visit there and interact with locals, talk with locals.
Please do not spread fake news about China. There is no such cleansing in China as you said.
@@jchanmcse that’s what they said
@@jchanmcse Are you living in a darkened room.
Woman need more rights and freedom . Govt should not force to have more kids .shame
😂
Still 153 persons in per square km in CHINA tooooo far more than russia , canada , australia US and mongilia
Look at Japanese no kids falling gnp
Quality vs Quantity referencing human life. What a western concept.
7 kids per 1000? That’s wild
Believe it or not, it's pretty much the same story in the US when it comes to birth.
The US population would halve before I'm 60, if it weren't for immigration. That, is pretty wild.
Will China open up ti Immigration say from NK HK VN etc. Is China following Japan's declining birth rate path and has to cope with an aging population.
可以开放，但是必须能融入中国，像东南亚佛教国家可以。但是穆斯林不行他们去哪里都融入不了当地！
@@user-yc4kt8lm2qRacist, thats why so few people want to immigrate to china
China can lose 60% of the population and the country will still be fine. It's so verry crowded already. Having less people will make everyone's life so much better. China doesn't need more people for Christ's sake. The subways and every street in China are so extremely crowded. Imagine if half of the crowd disappear in 50 years. That will make qualify of life so much better. China doesn't need to have that many workers to make things and build things when the consumers also shrink in numbers. There is already AI that can replace so many jobs, even doctors' jobs. Any doctors who don't operate or perform surgical procedures can be perfectly replaced by A.I. if they are there to just ask some questions and then prescribe medicine.
@@CaiCaiTai the problem isn’t about having less people overall. The problem is not having enough of the current population to take care and fund the aging/retiring pervious generation. Much of the Chinese industry and development will be severely impacted/damaged by this huge demographic decline. There were many factors that caused this but the main one was the badly thought out one child policy. Population control is not inherently bad when done humanely and sparingly but that policy was done on to large a scale for far to long and sadly the Chinese people with be suffering from its unintended consequences for the next couple of decades😟
it should happen in India also. our earth is swelling. bringing up children needs more money. another 100 years sure population will go down. it's really good. our mother earth needs space
Fibonacci is not a liar, the answer is no. You misundersfand the numbers and drawing propagandist conclution from them.
Comments full of Chinese offended by this news topic lol.
Yeah, because there are so many people DESPERATE for China's decline, they will do anything just to see a bit of bad news LMAO
A demographic crisis???😂😂😂 China has 1.4 billion… population that of whole of Europe and United States combined…. Why demographic crisis? Even if one fourth of the population continues to survive, it will equal the size of United States. The heading is just to draw attention as in all news headlines.
🤣
Oh yeah. China's just fine.
🙄
You're hilarious.
It’s not the total population that the problem. It’s that so much of the population will be to old to work in the coming years without enough of the next generations to support them. You can’t fix 40 years of damage by badly designed and unscientific program like the one child policy overnight. You have to wait for the new generations to be born and grow to working age.
is not about numbers is about the the distribution of age in those numbers ... is a simple concept .
@@Rjsjrjsjrjsj Well hello Richard, I see you are still desperate for China's decline. "B-b-but it's happening, t-t-trust me please..."
w
@@J_X999 Interesting. You seem to know me. I couldn't care less who you are. 😉
Yes. China's fate occupies my every waking hr. 🙄
Believe what you like. Project all you want. China's done. 👍
👋
Population reduction is the best thing for planet earth.... eventually there will once again be enough for everyone
It is like the USA has more quantity and quality demographics compared to Asian countries.
This is not a problem.
Says the bat eater
Ask the Japanese
@@Nope991 LOL, salty cos allah isn't helping the Uighurs getting slaughtered :)
I am an Indian immigrant to US. In India, we have a great folk story whose moral conclusion is that don't go gung-ho until you got your target otherwise you will become laughing stock. China did exactly opposite of that. It made too big hullabaloo of surpassing America and becoming world's superpower. Now when it will fall, it will become laughing stock of world. Enjoying this too much!
Why doesn’t China attract more immigrants for all the craziness about Regan he did one good thing by initiating the Lottery system for young immigrants as if he knew what was ahead for the Western Hemisphere
China is super racist
It is a dictatorship they want their people to be scared and feel unable to speak their opinions. They want the people not to think for themselves or learn values of free speech.
Not many immigrants want to work in a dictatorship, no privacy or peace to be had in China
The language and culture of China makes assimilation of foreigners and immigrants infinitely more difficult than in a place like the US. The Chinese government is also very nervous about how foreigners might influence or corrupt their culture and social institutions. They're more scared of the consequences of letting in immigrants than their own population decline.
There is no problem for China in long run, Indian men & Chindians from ASEAN will save China. Just CCP China needs to get more girls from Pakistan, Central & West Asia for Chinese men.
send ur mother and sister for chinese men
The Chinese government aren’t fans of immigration and the levels needed would be in the millions. I don’t know if they’re up for that big change in policy.
LOL
if they are Muslim, there is no problem unlike hindu dharam islam isnt racist, on the otherhand, we have been very very successful converting and taking hindu galz, now all indian men are overjoy after section 377 removal, enjoy, leave hindu galz (already taken) for us, dont do abortion on them 🙏
You're actually not wrong. Only a relaxed migration policy from ASEAN and south asia is enough to deal with this problem. There are millions and millions of extremely poor unemployed workers in south Asia and south east asia, men and women
China is a great civilization and they can recover from it. Best wishes from India .
you know they are changing the path of rivers to leave some parts of india without water and you wish them good luck ,,, isnt that like stockholm syndrome?
thank you❤
China's population is so large even with population decline that they will always have plenty of people to accomplish goals. There's also the phenomenon of technical advancement (robots).
that is true but the biggest concern is the Huge aging population that will come with it. by 2060 more than 600 million retirees with only 400 million people supporting this aging population.
It's not about the number but the age. China's demographic is alarming mostly because it's the fastest aging population in the world. Their current social and healthcare infrastructure cannot support the number of old people with 13 of its provinces' pension funds projected to go bankrupt by 2026. They also have terrible nominal GDP for a country to reach this stage, unlike Japan and EU who were way richer by the time their population declined. There are still 400m Chinese living in abject poverty in its rural areas.
I dont think you understand how fast it can go, if all people from now on only take 1 child, population will more then half every generation, wich is a HUGE problem if you look at the long term.
Problems is they are not just large but Chinese population are old and majority of them will couldn't work in next decades that's huge problem
They will have an army of old geriatrics because they did one child policy
Habeebi, come to India,
No, it WON'T because TECHNOLOGY ( AI) will be the ANSWER!
Human is required to run & monitor the technology.
@Surojeet Chatterjee dude! You don't need that many... I don't know about other countries but for China I think China will be in good hands judging from its progress and developments for the last 4 decades...from.what I see too many fake news nowadays just want to earn some big bucks, so they will find anything to strash China in order to get some Dineros that all. Hey, this is what I call the cynical of nowadays geopolitics lol 😆.very childlist!!! Instead cooperate between countries and build a better world 🌎 for future generations but this is what we see and have today!
lol
@@alantran1914 that's a different context of geopolitics, I was talking about practicality bcs I know China can't think properly, more like robotic, but China has no problem in population terms, bcs Indian men r there in China & chindians r there in ASEAN to boost Chinese population in long run. 😁 lots of chindian babies will be made in China.
@Surojeet Chatterjee so, now we know that China DOES NOT has religion suppression, like many fake news nothing NEW! 🙄
We Indians have a lot... Purchase Babies from India 🇮🇳 or Pakistan
Lol yeah sardar g.
The crinese crybabies imperialist wannabees are to racist to have kids from other countries
可能会买东南亚的。印度算了，黑人在中国被歧视的
Assalamualaikum
I request @aljazeeraenglish to please please have a coverage on the demise of the 8th NIZAM of HYDERABAD (Mukarram Jah) , India ....
وعليكم السلام ورحمة الله وبركاته
20 years from now, Chinese is mingle to all women around the world: Africa, Arabe, SouthEast Asia, even thers: Russia, Europe and America. ....That why MAN is preferred in Chinese Culture.
Even if we are more today, most places are in population decline, which means that there aren't that many women for those million chinese batchlors elsewhere either.
You sound silly.
This is not just Chinese issue. It's worldwide. Today you really need to get a stable very high paid job to sustain family of 2 or 3 children.
There is no population decline , natural increase is continuing.
Are you….. have u seen outside lately
lol
May God be the glory that wasn't a good policy because the blood from those unborn babies those baby blood is going to be required to their hands the Lord. God says hallelujah
This topic is senseless and uneducated!
7- pepcprpnn of josutnlaisiti are enfp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So really are you all saying the more People in A Country it's better for the Country? Really Really? what A bunch of confusing People Or maybe I should say Jack a ss?
haha you are so offended i grab my popcorn
It would be easy to pick up the pace of population growth from where they've left off. I'm sure growth would pivot in the next decade considering the incentive now provided by the state to encourage and foster child birth.
They been trying to get people to get more children since 2016, and birthrate still been going down since then, so no, the growth will not for sure pivot, also the bad economy is not helping.