China has done a great job of reversing its population growth rate. Today, there are 1.7 births for every woman compared to 2.2 in the USA. The Chinese government expects to stop population growth at 1.4B Chinese.  The one child per couple policy has been the principle cause of the slow down in population growth.  The unintended consequence of the one child policy is an imbalance between boys and girls.  Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls.  This preference is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.

 

China to Keep Population Below 1.37b

(2006/01/07)

BEIJING, Jan.7 - China's population and family planning minister said here on Friday that China will work to limit its mainland population below 1.37 billion by 2010.

Zhang Weiqing, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, stressed that China will keep its family planning policy in place to maintain a low birth level.

"But demographically speaking, China will face another upsurge of population growth in the coming five years, and China's first single-child generation is about to enter reproductive age then, which make it all the more difficult to maintain a low birth level in the coming years," said Zhang.

Statistics from the commission show that China's population has been brought under control in the past 5 years, with birth rate and natural growth rate dropped from 14.03 per thousand to 12.29 per thousand and 7.58 per thousand to 5.87 per thousand respectively.

According to data released by commission, given China failed to implement the family planning policy, China's population would be nearly 400 million more than the present figure.

Zhang said China will continue to improve its legal system on population in an effort to work out laws and regulations to manage unbalanced sex ratio at birth.

Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in the world's most populous nation. About 40 million men may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020.

(Source: Xinhuanet)

The imbalance of boys and girls is not just a problem for the “frustrated bachelors”; it is a problem for the survival of the Chinese as an ethnic population.   If current trends continue the Chinese population will peak at 1.4b and then begin to decline rapidly.  Why this rapid decline?  Women have babies, not men.  The number of births is not a function of the total population, but to the number of women of child bearing age.  In each succeeding generation, there are a decreasing total number of women. Women are only 45% of China’s child bearing age now, according to the U.S Census Bureau ( www.census.gov/ ( search for IDB Summary Demographic Data for China).  China’s government concludes that this trend will continue unless laws and regulations are changed to manage the imbalance.

But will this happen?    China’s repressive Communist regime has not been successful in eliminating the Confucianist prejudice against girls and for boys that is part of Chinese culture, why would it be able to do so now, when the government has far less control over people’s choices?  The Chinese government is falling behind in providing the basic health care and pension benefits for its people as promised by the Communist revolution.  The aging population will require more health and pension benefits.  The traditional Chinese old age program has been sons who were required to take care of their parents.  If the government can no longer keep its promises, then the population will revert to what has always worked in its culture, boys.  So, the pressure to have boys to provide for China’s growing aged population will grow, not diminish.

If the government begins to offer incentives to have more girls, this will only make the problem worse.  For instance if a family has a boy child first, through accident or sex selection procedures, and the government offers an incentive for them to have another child,  there is more than a 50% chance that the child will be a boy anyway, because at birth there are slightly more boys than girls (about 5%).  If a family has a girl first, there will be no incentive for the government to offer an incentive to the family, therefore there will be an incentive for families to ensure that they have a boy first, not a girl.  Either way, the population will become more and more skewed toward males.

If the current trends are plotted, the last Chinese person will be born in year 3546.  So that 1500 years from today, there will be no pure Chinese ethnic people.  But before that happens, the Chinese culture will die.  In a mere 300 years the Chinese population will fall from 1.3b to 391 million (assumes no migration).  This population loss will be accompanied by mass migration of the bachelor males from China.  11% of males between the ages of 20 and 34 could be without partners.  In 2026 this is the equivalent of about 12 million men.  Presumably, only the educated will be able to migrate to other countries, leaving behind, the lucky (able to find partners) or the uneducated.

Many books and articles have predicted that China will funnel its excess males into the military and set out to conquer the world.  I disagree.  China’s aging population, severe environmental problems, fragile military dictatorship, increasing economic dependence on the west will not make it possible for them begin military adventurism.  The Chinese are smart and will choose the cheaper and less disruptive option of migration, not war.

Of course, the Chinese will try to reverse their one child policy to reverse the total population decline.   Instead of limiting the number of children it can simply encourage lots of children, hopefully relieving the pressure for sex selection.  China’s emerging middle class has high aspirations and with increasing aspiration comes declining birth rates.  Women also, have high aspirations and high aspirations for their children.  Having seen the benefits of single child families to provide better education and housing for their children, and after a life time of indoctrination by their government, it is not likely that the government will be able to reverse the trend quickly.

China is beginning a necessary but dangerous path to decrease population.   Ancient Rome had the same problem with gender imbalance.  Girls were routinely exposed because they could not carry on the family name and they required a dowry.  Some scholars believe this may have contributed to the decline of the Roman empire.  Hopefully the world’s oldest and greatest civilization can reinvent itself again in order to reverse the population freefall that could result from the current trends.