As China's sliding birth rate gathers momentum, celebrity economist Ren Zeping has warned the country may reach the point of no return unless it introduces sweeping measures to support maternity and families.
But Ren warned that in the long term, given China's low fertility rate and declining number of women of childbearing age, "it is difficult to reverse the downward population trend if there is no substantial, effective policy to encourage births."
In 2023, the country of 1.4 billion saw the number of births drop for the seventh consecutive year. It also counted more deaths than births for the second year running, a 2.08-million contraction equivalent to the population of New Mexico, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.
Chinese officials are hoping to see a modest baby bump in 2024, an auspicious "year of the dragon," as occurred during the last dragon year (2012) on the Chinese zodiac. This is likely to happen given last year's uptick in marriages, which are "strongly and linearly positively correlated with births"—albeit thanks more to the end of China's strict pandemic-era measures than to the zodiac, University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer Yi Fuxian previously told Newsweek.
The country urgently needs to "fully liberalize and encourage fertility," Ren wrote in a blog post Wednesday, pointing out that China's fertility rate—the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime—is the second lowest among the major economies.
Newsweek reached out by email for comment to China's National Bureau of Statistics.
China's relaxation of its decades-old one-child policy in 2016 and its two-child policy in 2021 have had little effect. Meanwhile, the rising cost of living, especially in the largest cities, has coincided with a general shift in attitudes on child-rearing among younger generations, he said.
In recent years, local governments have introduced a range of measures meant to encourage childrearing, such as birth subsidies, improved maternity insurance and prioritization for housing.
But Ren said much more needs to be done. He called on the government to extend minimum maternity leave from the current 14 weeks and for strengthening support for paternity leave.
He also said that women's employment rights need strengthening and that the government should "vigorously issue birth subsidies" to families, according to the number of children.
"For example, the subsidy for one child would be 1,000 yuan [about $140], the subsidy for two-child families would be 3,000 yuan, and the subsidy for three-child families would be 6,000 yuan," he said. This financial boost to families would support domestic demand and economic growth in the short term and the fertility rate and human capital in the long term, he said.
China's looming demographic crisis is a familiar one for Ren. The economist and Zeping Macro founder, who boasts over 5 million followers on China's X-like social media platform Weibo, once had his account suspended after his suggestion that the government allocate $314 billion for raising the fertility rate went viral.
The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences think tank has predicted that if the country continues along its current course, the population of the world's second-most populous country could plummet by 60 percent by the end of the century.
China is not alone in its demographic woes. Most of East Asia's populations are reproducing at well below the replacement rate of 2.1 percent.
Update 3/16/24, 12:00 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ... Read more
