China is home to 1.4 billion people. That means
about one out of every five people around the world
lives in China. But the country is facing a
population crisis. The Chinese population shrinking for the first
time since the great famine. In 1961 China's population
could shrink by 48% between now and the end of
the century. China's population decline has really come faster
than was expected. It could mean economic stagnation and
it could also mean that China may never eclipse the
US as the world's largest economy to maintain its current
population. Every woman in China must give birth to
two Children in her lifetime. But China's fertility rate
has dropped well below that threshold. Urban households have
even lower fertility rates. Shanghai's fertility rate in 2022
was 0.7. That's lower than South Korea. The
country with the world's lowest fertility rate. The past
decades, China has really been dependent on this vast
labor force for the economic boom. As this labor
force is shrinking will China still have the same driving
force for its economic growth but also for global economic
growth. China's working age population already started to contract
around 2015 or 2016 in the next three decades.
Until 2015, the working age population can further drop
by 300 million. In the longer term. We
have fewer people working by supporting more people in the
retirement, less demand, less outputs who are just
entering such a vicious cycle. We have a government
think tank estimating that the main pension fund for urban
workers will hit zero by 2035. It could leave
huge burdens for of elderly people and their offsprings who
are not taken care of by the social security system
. Beijing really needs to not only shifts growth model
but also it needs to rapidly increase spending on pensions
and health care. If it fails, it could
mean economic stagnation and it could also mean that China
may never eclipse the US as the world's largest economy
. China's GDP growth can slow from 5% at present
to like 2% in 30 years. So for those
who are relying on China's demand, they have to
prepare for slowing China economy. This also means opportunity
for some emerging economies like India who also want to
grow at a fast speed trying to gaining more share
in the global economy. They still have a quite
strong population growth which can be an important driver for
their GDP growth. But for a long time,
China wanted to keep its population growth under control as
a shortage of resources put pressure on the developing country
. The government introduced a policy in 1980 that limits
families to have just one child. The government implemented
the policy through fines. There is potential loss of
jobs if you are a government employee. But also
in many cases, forced abortions and sterilizations. The
normal range for sex ratio at birth is between 100
and 3 to 107 male to 100 female. Since
the 19 eighties. This ratio in China has stayed
well above that. The most recent census suggest that
there are over 32 million more men than women in
China. With the lack of female population and decades
of stringent birth control, the government had reduced the
number of births in the last few decades by 400
million. But now they're facing a tough challenge of
reversing that these demographic challenges have attracted attention from the
highest levels. With President Xi saying that China is
going to focus on boosting birth rates and also take
a proactive response to the aging population. So the
government has reverse this one child policy at a very
rapid clip in 2016 and officially ended that policy in
place of the two child policy. And even two
years ago when we had then again, the three
child policy, this has really done very little to
put a halt to this very rapidly dropping fertility rate
. China's government, especially in the very top echelons
are very much male dominated. One criticism of some
of these policies is that they just fall so woefully
short and they are very male centric. They are
more superficial responses to very deeply entrenched social issues that
women are demanding change to ensure that economic growth doesn't
slow with this population drag, Beijing has some tools
in its toolkit. It can raise the retirement age
and it can also encourage people to move from the
rural areas into the cities. And it is already
investing heavily in vocational education as well as in automation
and science and technology population decline. It's a global
issue. We are all preparing for a world with
fewer population and fewer workers. China probably have,
you know, slowed much faster than other countries at
a similar stage. But I think other economy,
they are also seeing a slowdown in the growth.
So in the longer run, it's not necessarily that
when China slows other economy will gain from China's decline --> .