China Hits Record Low Fertility Rates in 2023

China’s National Bureau of Statistics produced its data for 2023 on Wednesday, revealing the population fell for the second year in a row and fertility rates are stuck at record lows.

The Chinese government strove to attribute its population decline to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, with its elevated mortality rates and severe lockdowns, but Reuters quoted outside analysts who pointed to the lingering demographic hangover from China’s brutal “One Child” forced abortion policies, as well as the same factors pushing fertility rates down in many other industrialized countries.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s national population declined by 2.08 million last year, or 0.15 percent. That might not seem like much when measured against a population of over 1.4 billion, but China needs population growth to meet its industrial goals.

Deaths in China rose 6.6 percent to reach 11 million, the highest mortality rate since the Cultural Revolution, which was largely attributed to the pandemic and its aftermath. Meanwhile, births declined by 5.7 percent thanks to a record-low fertility rate of 6.39 per 1,000 people. South Korea currently has the lowest birth rate of a major country at 4.9 per 1,000 people.

The United Nations currently projects China will lose 109 million population by 2050, which is “triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019,” as Reuters pointed out.

The shortage of births means China’s population is aging, with an increase of over 400 million in the over-60 population predicted by 2035. China currently has about 280 million people over 60, so the immense surge of elderly coupled with a shortage of young workers will put a major strain on welfare and medical systems.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Wednesday quoted Chinese researchers who suggested the coming labor shortage could be offset by robots – a somewhat dubious proposition, given the difficulty of getting robots to pay taxes to support pensions for the elderly.

“Replacing humans with robots is showing its economic benefits amid a labor shortage and rising labor costs,” said an upbeat research note from Huafu Securities, which observed that China’s huge investment in robotics has enabled to catch up with automation powerhouses like South Korea, Germany, and Japan in only a few years.

The reigning king of robotic workplaces is South Korea, which has an even worse problem with insufficient human births and aging demographics than China and Japan. The SCMP quoted analysts who said South Korea was fortunate to have two leading industries that could be heavily robotized, namely electronics and automobiles, while China will probably be unable to maintain its desired rate of economic growth through automation.

China has two other unique problems: a deeply demoralized younger generation that increasingly says it cannot afford marriage or children, and the melancholy of losing its “demographic dividend,” a surge in the size of its working-age population over the past three generations that has now fizzled out.

The Economist posited in September that the “demographic dividend” was somewhat mythical and China’s tremendous growth in the 1990s and 2000s was more due to policy liberalization and improving worker quality rather than quantity. Younger Chinese nevertheless feel like they live on a barren beach after the tide has receded and will never experience the exuberant economic growth and soaring living standards their parents did.

Exuberance means babies, while glum societies grow less fertile. The Economist suggested some of the pessimism felt by Chinese youth was exaggerated – for example, China’s cities can probably handle more growth with proper management and real estate reforms, so the dream of moving from rural China to get a good job in the big cities is not entirely dead.

The SCMP blamed China’s crashing fertility rates on “the high cost of raising children, a greater pursuit of individualism and a diversified lifestyle dampen enthusiasm to start a family.”

These factors might have been intensified by the coronavirus lockdowns, which crushed the spirits of young Chinese people far more than their leadership anticipated. That could be one reason China’s pro-fertility policies have not worked as well as hoped, although some critics also say the Chinese government has announced many policies that it did not fund adequately or manage well.

China’s state-run Global Times remained serenely convinced on Tuesday that the terrible new demographic figures are just a passing problem because the government will eventually craft the right mix of “fertility support policies” to solve the problem.

The Global Times was, however, willing to admit that “long-term negative population growth” is now an “established reality” in China, having formerly dismissed such concerns as hype from Western media.

One expert quoted by the Global Times suggested the Chinese Zodiac might ride to the rescue:

Yuan Xin, deputy head of the China Population Association and a demographer from Nankai University in Tianjin, said that in 2024, the negative population growth may be alleviated to some extent due to Chinese people’s preference toward the Year of the Dragon and a birth rebound after the three-year COVID-19 pandemic. He made the remarks at a Tuesday seminar organized by the China Population Association.

Others thought the growing reluctance of young women to get married and have children could still be overcome with the right program of incentives and “supportive policies,” arguing that while municipal governments have announced major subsidy programs, they still have not given the public the support it needs to make children affordable.

Some of these Chinese demographers said the scattershot mixture of policies offered by different cities and provinces was confusing to the public and made the government look unserious, while a coordinated national effort with a “systemic policy reshape” might give young people the confidence needed to increase their fertility.

China Population and Development Research Center director He Dan suggested a well-crafted fertility policy would prioritize “reducing living expenses, alleviating educational anxiety and promoting female employment,” three factors widely seen as leading young couples to conclude the costs of marriage and parenthood are too high.