By Farah Master
HONG KONG (Portal) – Living under China’s strict COVID-19 restrictions for the past three years had caused Zhang Qi enough stress and uncertainty to consider not having babies in the country.
When China abruptly lifted its “zero-COVID” regime last month to allow the virus to spread freely, the balance tipped toward a resounding “no,” said the Shanghai-based e-commerce executive.
Stories of mothers and babies being unable to see a doctor because medical facilities were overwhelmed by COVID infections were the last straw for Zhang.
“I’ve heard that giving birth in a public hospital is just awful. I really wouldn’t think about having a baby,” said the 31-year-old.
A glimpse of the scars the pandemic has left on China’s already bleak demographic outlook may come to light when the country releases its official 2022 population data on Jan. 17.
Some demographers expect China’s population in 2022 to experience its first decline since the Great Famine of 1961, a profound change with far-reaching implications for the global economy and order.
New births for 2022 are expected to fall to record lows, falling below 10 million from last year’s 10.6 million babies – already down 11.5% from 2020.
“With this historic turning point, China has entered a long and irreversible process of population decline for the first time in the history of China and the world,” said Wang Feng, professor of sociology at the University of California.
“In less than 80 years, China’s population could be reduced by 45%. Then it will be a China unrecognizable from the world.”
China’s total population increased by 480,000 to 1.4126 billion in 2021. The United Nations predicts China’s population will decline this year as India overtakes it as the world’s most populous country.
UN experts expect China’s population to shrink by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline in their previous forecast in 2019.
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While nine of the world’s ten most populous nations are seeing declines in fertility, China’s fertility rate in 2022 was the lowest at 1.18, well below the OECD standard of 2.1 for a stable population.
The country, which enforced a one-child policy from 1980 to 2015, officially admitted it was on the brink of a demographic downturn last year when the National Health Commission said the population could decline before 2025.
In October, President Xi Jinping said the government would take further measures to boost the country’s birth rate.
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Since 2021, authorities have introduced measures including tax deductions, longer maternity leave, improved health insurance and housing subsidies to incentivize people to have more babies.
Its impact has so far been lackluster.
Online searches for baby strollers on Baidu in China fell 17% in 2022 and are down 41% since 2018, while searches for baby bottles have fallen by more than a third since 2018. In contrast, searches for nursing homes for the elderly have increased eight-fold over the past year.
The opposite is playing out in India, where Google Trends saw a 15% year-over-year increase in searches for baby bottles in 2022, while searches for cribs increased almost fivefold.
The financial strain of children’s education, some of the most stressful college entrance exams in the world, and a kindergarten enrollment rate of just around 5.5% for children under 3 years old — well below the OECD average — are key factors affecting the fertility rate YuWa Das shared the think tank Population Research this month.
The economic impact of an aging society will be significant.
Demographer Yi Fuxian expects the proportion of people over 65 to reach 37% in 2050, up from 14% last year and 5% in 1980. Due to the declining birth rate, the labor force is not being replenished to the same extent.
“Rapid aging is slowing China’s economy, reducing revenue and increasing public debt… China is getting old before it gets rich.”
Murphy, a 22-year-old student at Beijing University of Communications, said she couldn’t afford a child due to the weak economy.
The lockdowns cooled the economy last year to one of the lowest growth rates in almost half a century.
“The pandemic has reinforced my view,” said Murphy, who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons. “Even if I could make my own living, why would I want babies?”
(Additional reporting by Liz Lee, Joe Cash and Beijing Newsroom; Sophie Yu in Shanghai and Angel Woo in Hong Kong; Editing by Marius Zaharia and Lincoln Feast.)