China is relaxing its family policy and allowing couples to have up to three children in future – a move that some argue comes too late to have a sustained effect on the fertility rate, the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) reported.
Against the backdrop of the unexpectedly massive decline in the birth rate and the rapid ageing of Chinese society, the Politburo of the Communist Party decided at a meeting in Beijing on Monday that such “optimization of birth policies” would help improve the population structure, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The decision came just three weeks after the publication of the latest census, which showed the world’s most populous country is threatened to shrink in a few years.
Experts cited the decades-old one-child policy, which was only abolished in 2015, as well as the high costs of housing and education as reasons. Many Chinese have also become accustomed to having only one child, they said.
In the past 10 years, China’s population has grown by only 0.53 per cent annually to just over 1.4 billion people – the slowest pace in decades.
The one-child policy that had been in place since 1979 was abolished in 2015 and replaced by a two-child policy. However, the turnaround had only led to a slight increase in births in 2016. Since then, the number has fallen every year.
The move was too little, too late, according to Yi Fuxian, family planning expert at the University of Wisconsin.
“The one-child policy has changed Chinese childbearing attitudes and distorted moral values about life; and the economy, social environment, education and almost everything else relates back to the one-child policy,” Yi told dpa.
“Having just one child or no children has become the social norm in China. Social and economic patterns cater to the one-child policy, so the inertial effects linger on.”
The three-child policy will not boost the fertility rate, either, he said.
At best, the Chinese government will just copy what Japan is currently doing, providing free childcare, free education, housing subsidies for young couples, and free medical care for children, he said.
Yi noted that Japan’s policies are very expensive, but not very effective. Japan’s fertility rate increased from 1.26 in 2005 to 1.45 in 2015 and then decreased to 1.36 in 2019.
“China is ageing before it gets rich, and ageing is causing its economy to slow down,” Yi said.
Local governments are facing a debt crisis and simply do not have the financial resources to encourage fertility. It will be very difficult for China to stabilize its total fertility rate at 1.2 in the future, he said.
The fertility rate has fallen to 1.3 children per woman, according to the statistics office, far lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population.
The number of marriages is also falling, while China’s divorce rate is far higher than in Japan or South Korea, for example.
Many couples also wait to marry and only start families later.
Meanwhile as the population ages, China is also considering raising the retirement age – a highly unpopular idea.
China has one of the youngest retirement ages in the world, as women can retire at 50 or 55, depending on their work, while men may retire at 60, in a dated regulation established when life expectancy was lower.
There are growing doubts, meanwhile, that China’s latest census reflects the true numbers, with experts suggesting these may be even lower than thought.
In 2020, there were 12 million births, far higher than the 10.04 million reported by the Ministry of Public Security, experts said, highlighting an inconsistency.
And as 10 million people die annually in China, the falling birth rate suggests zero growth, or even a population decline.
