China may or may not overcome the challenges of negative population growth, high youth unemployment and an aging population by radically recalibrating its economic focus on innovations and high tech.
As a result of the one-child policy, China’s fertility rate was well below 2 children per woman for more than three decades.
At the same time, according to the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute, the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China stood at 485,000 yuan ($76,629) for a first child in 2019, almost seven times China’s per capita GDP that year ($10,144). The financial burden has many families thinking twice before adding members to their family.
The combination of more retirees and a shrinking working-age population means fewer people have to support a larger share of the population, putting pressure on Beijing’s health care and pension programs.
I was in Beijing and travelled west across China and over two weeks’ time, and there was no city where the population wasn’t totally overcrowded at every turn. Visiting the Great Wall was like being in Walmart here on Black Friday - no elbow room at all. And in most public spaces we were shoulder to shoulder with other people all the time. I decrease in their enormous population could only be for the better in the long run.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !news@beehaw.org
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
Where possible, post the original source of information.
If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
I was in Beijing and travelled west across China and over two weeks’ time, and there was no city where the population wasn’t totally overcrowded at every turn. Visiting the Great Wall was like being in Walmart here on Black Friday - no elbow room at all. And in most public spaces we were shoulder to shoulder with other people all the time. I decrease in their enormous population could only be for the better in the long run.