China’s population declines, women face rising pressure from authorities – For the third consecutive year, China’s population has declined. To revive the country’s birth rate, authorities are relying on incentive-based policies as well as intrusive campaigns targeting women.
https://international.la-croix.com/ethics/chinas-population-declines-women-face-rising-pressure-from-authorities
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From the article
>The days when Beijing feared overpopulation feel like a distant memory. On January 17, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced a decline in the country’s population for the third consecutive year. By the end of 2024, China’s population was 1.408 billion, compared to 1.410 billion in 2023—a drop of two million. The situation is expected to worsen in the coming years. According to a World Population Prospects report, the number of Chinese citizens could be halved by 2100.
>To the government, any means is justified to boost the [birth rate](https://international.la-croix.com/ethics/pope-expresses-alarm-over-declining-birth-rates), even if it means interfering in women’s private lives.
As with all Empires- make life more worth living, and make child-rearing less of an authoritarian chore, and people will have kids. Birthrates plummet when life fucking sucks. And it fucking **sucks** in a lot of places these days.
Damn I remember when growing up all they did was talk about China’s one child per family rule. I remember documentaries about the lengths that people in charge would go to convince people with a second pregnancy to abort the child. It seems very strange to be reading this
They are only bothering women? Doesn’t the CCP know it takes two to tango?
Less people, better job opportunities.
More power to the people, more resources to share, more room for other animals.
No economy can grow on a finite planet, forever. This change is clearly positive – only the billionaires aren’t happy about it. Fuck them.
No one has really figured out how to reverse fertility rate decline once it gets too low.
It may require time on top of a lot of real investment in the future (not just a $1k bonus to childbirth) and childrearing in society.
And doing so instead of the reverse–squeezing and indebting the future to serve aging boomers who usually can’t even open their email (and in this case control the party that controls that country without any democratic accountability).
We’ll see what happens, but the medium future of China does not look bright
Bro they have like several times the amount of people they should already
It would be wild if the Chinese get this under control by backing off of communism and government parasitism to the point that the women who wanted to could all be stay at home mothers and the family could have a high standard of living on the father’s income alone.
Could be a while cultural shift coming with some of this.
Edit: To head off sexism accusations, I’d also be happy to see fathers staying home. I’m a stay at home (and work from home) dad myself.
How about funding regenerative medicine research so that age related degenerative diseases are eliminated?? That would solve the problem without barging into people’s private lives– oh, wait.
The Chinese government is getting exactly what it deserves and it deserves exactly what it’s going to get
I feel like the US and China are racing to Handmaid’s Tale.
Interestingly enough the economy is growing at something like 5% while the population shrinks. That’s quite impressive; in some Western countries we’re relying on immigration for whatever growth we do have.
China when the population was “too high”: bitches ain’t shit, let’s oppress women!
China when the population is “too low”: bitches ain’t shit, let’s oppress women!
I think the men in charge just like oppressing women.
Maybe, just maybe, we all just get used to a lot less people being around, especially once automation really fleshes itself out.
When will countries learn that if you want a high birth rate then you need your citizens to feel financially secure. When people have less stress and more leisure time they will think more about starting families. The corporate/government mandate to take on more work for less pay is destroying a home life that encourages families.
All these declining birth rates. Isn’t that what they wanted ? This way when robots and AI take over our jobs it won’t be as impact full? Lol
I think the only solution to the declining birthrate problem that many nations are facing is that you have to make motherhood (or fatherhood if he’s the one staying at home) a paid full-time job, so if someone decides to step out of the career paths that they have available to them to be a mother, they are getting compensated at what would be considered a living wage for their area, and each additional child should increase the amount of that compensation. You will get people who are going to have kids just for the sake of having kids for the easy $$$, but it would allow a whole bunch of people who would probably love to be a stay at home, mother/father, the opportunity to be one. you have to make it make more sense to be a mother financially than to be an employee.
Kids are fucking expensive, everywhere, in financial and time expenses. It seems like all governments want to address anything but those. We’re a pretty high income household for my country and when I look at childcare costs honestly it’s cheaper to get a vasectomy as insurance not to have any.
Remember the 1-child-policy? Instead of punishing at more than one they gonna soon punish having less than 1 children lmao
They opened up shitloads of government run childcare facilities and are adding several hundred thousand qualified childcare professionals.
In addition to generous financial incentives.
This is one of those, “China is solving X problem, but at what cost?” articles.
I wish my country would copy these solutions.
But my country doesn’t even have paid parental leave because it might tank the sale of baby formula so I’m not holding my breath.
Jfc.
I am a woman in the later part of my fertile years. I wanted to have kids. I wasn’t going to if I couldn’t provide them with a nice life. Turns out, I can’t provide them with a nice life on my own, because my society sucks ass. So yeah. Maybe if you could convince me my kid and my lives wouldn’t suck, I’d have had a kid by now.
What I truly find baffling is why *any* of this is a surprise. Are they stupid? If so, why the fuck are they in charge?
Stay strong my sister in China!!! Sending support from USA!
Politicians will solve the problem as always!
Men vs women ratio imbalance?
Too much males?
Send men to war!!
This will fix the problem!
Pretty much everywhere right now. Nobody got money and time for children.