While not the official birthrate, the latest figure was a third lower than the number of births recorded in 2019 — already the country’s lowest since the early 1960s when China was in the middle of a famine. Yet, residents were not surprised by the data.
“A baby boom? You’ve got to be kidding me. Who would have a kid now? Raising a kid is asking for death,” one commentator wrote on the microblog Weibo. “When you have no income, who would dare make another life?” another said, referring to the economic strain many felt as the country ground to a halt.
“Whoever predicted a coronavirus baby boom must be disappointed. Faced with panic, we care more about survival,” one user wrote. “Who was in the mood to make babies?” another asked incredulously.
China has been working to reverse falling birthrates caused in part by decades of population controls. After the country relaxed its infamous one-child policy in 2016, allowing all families to have two children, initiatives have ranged from the supportive to the punitive.
Local authorities have offered child care subsidies and extended parental leave while others have ordered party cadres to set an example by having more children. China’s first civil code, which took effect last month, enshrined a “cooling off” period for couples applying for divorce.
Policymakers face a demographic crisis that could see the country’s population start to shrink as early as 2027, according to a worst-case estimate from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, resulting in demographic imbalances that would hamper economic growth. India could overtake China to be the world’s most populous country.
Official 2020 population data is expected to be released later this month, but over the course of January some local governments have published birth data showing declines as steep as 30 percent.
Experts predict the government will loosen restrictions further. But it is unclear whether even that will make a difference. An online poll in response to debate online that China could unveil a “three child policy” at a national legislative meeting in March asked whether such a change would increase birthrates. More than 80 percent of about 583,000 respondents said no, citing “practical reasons” for the low birthrate.
The coronavirus outbreak exacerbated existing pressures on parents from the rising costs and pressures of raising a child in China’s hyper-competitive cities. “During the pandemic children stayed at home every day and still had to take online classes. Young parents were more stressed. This is the case for one child. Two would be too much to handle,” Dong Yuzheng, director at the Guangdong Academy of Population Development, told Yicai, a financial news outlet.
In the face of reluctance to have children, some worry authorities will turn to heavy-handed population controls to encouraging births. At a local legislative session in Shanxi province in January, Guo Xingping, the head of the Shanxi Province Reproductive Science Institute, called for increasing “the willingness of people of childbearing age” through education and matchmaking to “guide them to give birth in a timely manner” between the ages of 21 to 29.
A researcher from the central province of Henan called on the local government to encourage well-educated couples to have more children. Others said authorities should give property to couples for each new child, while some joked that scientists ought to begin researching artificial wombs for men. One financial blogger called for a tax on those who decide not to have children.
Still others have advocated for measures that would address stagnant wages and a lack of government support for families. Liu Hengwei, a gynecologist at the Wuhan Zhongnan Hospital said new births in the hospital last year were as much as 40 percent lower than in 2019. Liu said authorities should find ways to reduce the pressures on young people today.
Liu wrote in a post online, “By improving livelihood and happiness of young people we will improve the birthrate.”
Still, young Chinese who do not want to have children are likely to chafe under whatever policies are adopted. In response to a debate online on how China should escape the “low fertility trip,” one commentator wrote, “Not getting married and not having children was the last right of young people. Now, even this has to be taken hostage.”
Lyric Li in Seoul and Alicia Chen in Taipei contributed to this report.
