Concerned by China’s shrinking population, political advisers to the government have come up with more than 20 recommendations to boost the nation’s birthrate, although experts say the best they can do is to slow the population’s decline.
China dug itself into a demographic hole largely through its one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015. Authorities raised the limit to three in 2021, but even when people were stuck at home during COVID-19 couples have been reluctant to have babies.
Young people cite high childcare and education costs, low incomes, a feeble social safety net and gender inequalities as discouraging factors.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The proposals to boost the birthrate, made at the annual meeting of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) this month, range from subsidies for families raising their first child, rather than just the second and third, to expanding free public education and improving access to fertility treatments.
Experts took the sheer number of proposals as a positive sign that China was treating its aging and declining demographics with urgency, after data showed the population shrinking for the first time in six decades last year.
“You cannot change the declining trend, but without any fertility encouragement policy then fertility will decline even further,” said Peng Xiujian (彭秀健), senior research fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia.
A motion by CPPCC member Jiang Shengnan (蔣勝男) that young people work only eight hours per day so that they have time to “fall in love, get married and have children,” is critical to ensure women are not overworked, Peng said.
Giving incentives to have a first child could encourage couples to have at least one child, she said. Many provinces only subsidize second and third children.
China’s birthrate last year fell to 6.77 births per 1,000 people, from 7.52 births in 2021, the lowest on record.
Experts also praised a proposal to scrap all family planning measures, including the three children limit and the requirement for women to be legally married to register their children.
Financial incentives are not enough and policies focusing on gender equality and better employment rights for women would likely have more of an effect, London School of Economics and Political Science associate professor Arjan Gjonca said.
CPPCC proposals such as maternity leave paid by the government rather than the employer would help reduce discrimination against women, while increasing paternity leave would remove a barrier so that fathers could take on more parenting responsibilities, experts said.
Demographer Yi Fuxian (易富賢) was skeptical about the measures, saying that China needs a “paradigm revolution of its entire economy, society, politics and diplomacy to boost fertility.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS