NYT “Inflicting 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 limit policy that has been maintained for decades, compared to the stage of economic development of Asian countries in similar situations, such as Korea and Japan, the pressure of population decline and aging will be more rapid. It was reported on the 18th (local time) that
In an analysis article titled ‘China may have brought on its own population decline and aging crisis’, the New York Times reported that China’s population decline has become a reality earlier and more rapidly than experts predicted, and this is largely due to the Chinese government’s belated response.
The Chinese leadership predicted that the population ‘inflection point’ was approaching and came up with various measures such as the abolition of the one-child policy, but it was not enough to catch up with the speed of population decline and aging, and the right time was missed.
In particular, the newspaper pointed out that the Chinese government has not properly chosen where to prioritize between conflicting policy goals, such as youth and elderly welfare, social security, and technological and military strengthening, in relation to the population decline crisis.
Ren Zoping, former chief economist of Hengda Group, said on social media after the population decline statistics were released, “Population is the most important future issue, but it is also the most easily overlooked.” “We need to come up with more active policies, such as guarantees,” he said.
The aftermath of China’s one-child policy, which was implemented to curb population growth, is expected to linger.
China introduced the ‘one family, one child policy’ in 1978, but when the birth rate declined steeply, it belatedly implemented the ‘two-child policy’ in 2016, and expanded it to three children in 2021, five years later.
Singapore’s CNA Broadcasting 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, 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 just too hard to raise one child,” he 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 either do not have children or are trying to have only one child due to the increase in childcare and education costs and the lack of substantial government support.
In particular, women who have to take care of 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 US, said that China’s fertility policy ignores the various pressures placed on women and does not know the realities faced by rural and working-class women in particular. .
Michael Beckley, a professor at Tufts University in the US, also pointed out that “the Chinese government’s population reform plan is nothing more than dropping a drop in a bucket.”
Professor Beckley added, “In China, 5 to 10 million workers will disappear each year and the number of elderly will increase accordingly. This demographic crisis cannot be compensated by simply raising the retirement age.”
/yunhap news
