Behind the ‘China Miracle’ Is a Ticking Demographic Time Bomb

A shrinking population continues to haunt the CCP

A medical staff member feeds a baby at a hospital in Danzhai, in China's southwestern Guizhou Province, on May 11, 2021. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

There is welcome and new-found—but much belated—focus by the Republican-led House of Representatives on the existential threat posed to the United States by communist China. A new committee, the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, is focused on the threat posed by the CCP to the American people, economy, and values.

Given the dramatic events inside and outside China in recent years, from COVID-19 policy mismanagement to continuing genocide and persecution against minority populations, to the dramatic modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), to the ongoing intimidation of Taiwan, China watchers have been speculating on whether China is rising, cresting, or in decline. Regardless of the trends, the existential threat posed by the CCP to the U.S.-led world order has never been more apparent, even to the point of bipartisan concerns expressed in the U.S. political class.

Despite the narrative that “all is well, trust the Party,” which has been manufactured and promoted by the CCP and state-run Chinese media during the Xi Jinping era, there are continuing signs of serious problems that beset the country. These include three of the biblical “four horsemen”: food insecurity (the ghosts of famine always loom large), pestilence (SARS-CoV-2 certainly qualifies, but is just the latest “virus on the loose”), and war (the Taiwan question plus continuing rumblings along the disputed Sino-Indian border). There are other problems of note, too, including the self-immolation of China in general through gross communist mismanagement—and the communist misbelief that complex human systems, economies, and human interactions can be successfully micromanaged in accordance with communist principles.

Communist mismanagement has been the rule, not the exception, since the CCP assumed power “through the barrel of the gun” in 1949, as Mao Zedong used to say. It is the gun—as manifested by the PLA—that enables the CCP to whimsically and arbitrarily implement crackpot policies that have killed millions of Chinese over the years.

The list of CCP transgressions is long: Laogai/Laojiao reeducation camps (gulags) “processed” upwards of 50 million people; the invasion, absorption, and continuing cultural genocide in Tibet; the implementation of the Hukou Registration Regulation to control internal movements and state-provided ration cards for all Chinese citizens; the Great Leap Forward (20 million died of starvation); the Great Famine (between 10 and 45 million died); the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1.5 million deaths plus the banishment of 20 million others); the ongoing genocide in East Turkmenistan (Xinjiang region); the continued persecution of Falun Gong and other religious minority groups.

Not to be outdone in arbitrary policy lunacy, Xi concocted and mandated the zero-COVID policy in early 2020 that decimated China for nearly three years. The iron grip of the CCP backed by the PLA also allowed Xi to turn on a dime and reverse that policy without any personal accountability for the devastation wrought on Chinese businesses and individuals. Who knows how many Chinese died as a result of the zero-COVID policy? The damage of that arbitrary and unscientific policy was evident to most Chinese by the end of 2022. The Chinese economy tanked during the fourth quarter of 2022 (2.9 percent), with officially reported GDP growth cut over half from 2021 (8.1 percent) to 2022 (3 percent).

Workers from a public service organization wearing protective gear deliver vegetables to residents of a neighborhood in lockdown, in Jing'an district, in Shanghai, on March 29, 2022. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Communist Fiddling With Demographics

Nowhere has communist mismanagement been felt more than in Beijing’s never-ending efforts to micromanage China’s population. Long-term food insecurity associated with the CCP’s mismanaged agrarian “reforms” and Mao’s failed initiatives coupled with a large and growing population resulted in the implementation of a “one-child policy” by then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the mid-1970s. The ostensible purpose was to slow the growth of China’s population, which was projected to reach 1 billion people by 1982.

The ideological purpose was the CCP’s lust for control and micromanagement of family units and individuals down to the personal choices made in simple daily living. This is characterized in 2023 by the increasing CCP focus on social controls to control individual behavior. The CCP supported birth control and family planning from 1949 onward, and the “One China” policy was a crystallization of communist thinking about population control by 1975.

The policy achieved an overall reduction in the Chinese birth rate to below replacement level by the early 1980s, but there were unintended consequences, as with all communist schemes. Because of the longstanding cultural preference for male children, in time, a gender imbalance developed, as the overall sex ratio in China tilted in favor of males by 3 or 4 percent. The one-child policy was also enforced through sterilization and abortion, especially of female children, resulting in a coarsening of Chinese society and a general acceptance of infanticide. Fortunately, the U.S. adoption of Chinese girl babies was a growth industry from the 1980s through 2008.

With the projection of millions of Chinese males being unable to marry due to the shortage of women, by 2011, Beijing was reversing course. The regime launched a drive against sex-selective abortion to help restore the gender balance. But that was not enough to reverse the impending demographic disaster resulting from the one-child policy that also affected the aging of the population.

The combination of declining birth and fertility rates and a decreasing number of Chinese marriages created an old-age dependency ratio problem throughout Chinese society. As of August 2022, some 18 percent of Chinese were over the age of 60, with that number projected to increase to one-third by 2050. Social welfare benefits to the elderly over time will be paid by a shrinking workforce that will inevitably exacerbate “old versus young” societal tensions.

A one-child policy billboard saying, 'Have fewer children, have a better life,' greets residents on the main street of Shuangwang, in southern China's Guangxi region, in May 2017. Goh Chai Hin/AFP via Getty Images

In 2015, Beijing abruptly ended the one-child policy—without public admission of failure, of course. This policy change did not stem the demographic decline, as the current fertility rate for Chinese women in 2023 is 1.705 births per woman, as reported by Macrotrends, and the gender imbalance persists. A total fertility rate (replacement rate) of 2.1 is generally understood to be required for a country to retain a stable population over time.

In May 2021, Beijing scrapped its two-child policy in favor of allowing three children per family—again without any public admission of previous policy failures. The demographic handwriting was on the wall in the form of a ticking population time bomb, and drastic measures were needed. The current emphasis in 2023 is on subsidizing children with state-run media lauding motherhood and the benefits of raising young children and tinkering with family leave and other policies to encourage people to have more children.

As reported by Zerohedge, “In the tech hub city of Hangzhou, home to Alibaba, the government is now giving parents of a third child 20,000 yuan, or $2,900, as a one-off subsidy. A second child will net parents around $720.” The article further noted that some Chinese provinces are even encouraging people “have as many babies as they want, even if they are unmarried.”

Will encouraging career-minded young Chinese women to trade their affluence for motherhood responsibilities actually make a dent in China’s demographic problem?

Apparently, not any time soon, as various media outlets reported in January that—for the first time since 1961—China’s population fell in 2022 to 1.411 billion. This number is “down some 850,000 people from the previous year,” as announced by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Concluding Thoughts

The CCP has a long history of mismanaging China in every way conceivable. Outward appearances of an “inevitably rising China” are endlessly propagated by state-run Chinese media. Behind the false glamor exist real problems that indicate that communist China is perhaps built on sand. The CCP’s misguided efforts aimed at “managing the Chinese population” are driving the country into the ditch.

Demographics are king and determine a country’s long-term destiny. Ask the Russians and Japanese how a below-2.1 fertility rate is working out for them! The Japanese fertility rate has been below 2.1 since 1974 (currently at 1.367 births per woman), and the “Japanese economic miracle” of the 1980s has faded from memory. Similarly, the Russian fertility rate has been declining since 1950 (currently at 1.825 births per woman), which contributed to the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

The ticking demographic time bomb is throwing a monkey wrench into Xi’s plans. The sooner, the better.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.