The National Health Commission of China confirmed that the population of the country, the most populous in the world, will decrease before 2025 and called for policies to encourage the birth rate.
The information, published on Tuesday by the official Global Times newspaper, appears in an article published in the state-run Oiushi Journal and marks the first time authorities have openly acknowledged that China’s population will decline soon.
The Asian giant has not registered a population decline since the early 60’swhen the famine caused by the state policy of the “Great Leap Forward” caused the death of around 30 million people.
On July 25, the director of the population and family affairs department of the National Health Commission was quoted by local media as saying that the country would record “negative growth” before 2025.
It is time to review and abolish important restrictive measures, make fertility policy more inclusive, improve child care services, and introduce active support measures to reduce the economic burden on the population and improve the development capacity of families.” , defends the report.
In China, the law does not allow single women to freeze their eggs, with few exceptions, but it does allow men to store their sperm, a discrimination that has sparked debate in recent years.
The birth rate, which fell to 1.3% in recent years”has become the main risk to the balanced development of China’s population,” wrote the Global Times.
At the same time, population aging has accelerated, along with the growth of the world’s second largest economy, and by 2035, people over 60 years of age are expected to represent more than 30% of the population compared to the current 18%.
The National Commission also pointed out that the average size of households in China has decreased 0.48% in the last decadeto 2.62 people in 2020.
In this context, the Commission considers it “vital” to improve the quality of life of the population and modify economic development plans to deal with negative growth, which “will be the dominant trend in the coming years and for a prolonged period”.
In the past, we focused on population control, but now we must focus on increasing fertility, improving population quality and structure, optimizing population distribution, and promoting long-term balanced population development,” he reports.
Among the measures suggested by the Commission to promote the birth rate are policies to support housing, education, health, employment and the blocking of excessive taxes on families with children, in order to “reduce the burden of educating children, fostering the desire of families to grow, and creating a child-friendly social atmosphere.
After decades of enforcing the one child policy and after extending it to two children, China allowed citizens to have a third child since last yearalthough the decision was not received with great enthusiasm by the population, both because of the economic weight of raising children and because of the priority that many women choose to give to professional careers.
According to figures released this month, last year saw the lowest number of births in many Chinese provinces. The province of Guangzhou alone, the most populous in the country, registered more than one million children born in 2021.
The population of other provinces, such as Hunan or Jiangxi, has fallen to its lowest level in almost 60 and 70 years, respectively.
International experts have predicted that neighboring India, with a population of around 1.38 billion today, will overtake China in the near future to become the world’s most populous country.
Source: Observadora
