ISTANBUL 

China is no longer the world’s most populous nation, recently ceding its long-held position to the planet’s only other population billionaire, India.

By all estimates, the two giants face starkly contrasting futures: India’s population figures will continue to grow for decades, while China’s have already started to decline.

Several factors, including fertility rate and economic influences, have played a significant role in China’s population story, according to Wang Hui, a labor and immigration expert at the Beijing-based Taihe Institute.

China’s population dropped for the first time in decades last year, while its fertility rate has reached a historic low of 1.2 children per woman.

However, Wang said China’s population growth had “already” been falling since the beginning of the 1970s, a decade before the one-child policy was fully implemented.

“China’s demographic reasons for the decreasing fertility rate include a fast-shrinking population of women of childbearing age (between 15-49) declining at roughly 5 million each year, later marriages, older first-time mothers, and fewer married couples,” she told Anadolu in an email interview.

In 2015, China changed course on its one-child policy after three decades. Now, the government has introduced a three-child policy.

The one-child rule was introduced during the 1980s to control and contain a population boom, particularly among the youth.

“The government doubted its capacity to provide enough food, housing and education for them and ... their children,” said Wang.

Chinese policymakers introduced the measures “to improve the standard of living of the population and manage the resource distribution,” said Wang, who is also an affiliated scholar at Cambridge University.

She, however, insisted that while the policy “indeed influenced the long-term population growth … the current low fertility rate of 1.2 birth per woman and the recent decline in fertility cannot be fully explained by the one-child policy.”

She shared data that showed a drop from 6.1 children per woman to 2.7 in China between 1970 and 1980.

“The effect of the one-child policy was felt in the 1990s, which is 10 years after the population policy was introduced,” she said.

The fertility rate was around 2.5 between 1980 and 1990, but “declined significantly to 1.6 in 2000 from 2.5 in 1990,” she added.

‘Dire future’

According to Wang, the policy changes introduced since 2016 “did not manage to reverse the trend of falling fertility.”

Instead, China has witnessed “further decline to the current level of 1.2 from 1.8 in 2016,” she said, warning that it indicates a “dire future in China’s population growth.”

While the one-child policy “successfully prevented over-population,” Wang said policymakers saw demography “merely as a raw number which poses threat to the governance of a growing population, but not as an integral part of a social phenomenon that are strongly correlated with economic and social development.”

When the one-child policy was implemented, she said the demographic “dividend” that would be produced by the population growth was “overlooked.”

She said it significantly contributed to economic growth in the 1990s and 2000s and the “prosperity” built by the GDP growth.

“Therefore, the controlling of the population growth influenced the labor market negatively by reducing the labor force,” said Wang.

The falling fertility, she added, also led to an aging problem due to improved public health, resulting in longer life expectancy and lower mortality rates.

According to Wang, that has “put pressure on the pension system as well as causing other social and economic issues.”

“This, along with a falling fertility rate, are explanatory factors for China’s aging society,” she said.

Besides, she added, “having children is no longer a strong will for women at the childbearing age.”

“Later marriages, older first-time mothers, and fewer married couples, are some of the common social observations today,” she said.

Data provided by Wang shows 18.7% of China’s population is above age 60, indicating that it is “rapidly entering a super-aged society where the elders (age 60 and above) make up over 20% of the Chinese population.”

According to UN, the share of the Chinese population above 60 is projected to reach 40% by 2050.

Shrinking labor force

“Unquestionably,” replied Wang, when asked whether an aging population will cause China’s labor force to shrink.

It will lead to reduced consumption and increased financial and healthcare burden, she added.

China currently has some 880 million workers, dominating the world in that respect.

The concern is the “persistent declining trend” in the size of the population of working age, as well as the share of the population participating in the labor market, said Wang.

However, she said the Chinese labor force remains “highly competitive” and equipped with education and skills.

The current trends show China’s manufacturing sector “still attracted (a) large workforce with necessary skills and knowledge-intensive sectors such as finance and technology see a gradually growing number of highly educated labor,” she added.​​​​​​​

However, according to Wang, changes in preference for different industries among younger generations will “certainly play a central role in the future distribution of labor across sectors.”

“Young people are less willing to take jobs in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture, but instead favoring the service sector, which is more comfortable compared with working in the primary and secondary industries,” she explained.