What happened to the fertility rate in China?

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SkinnedWolf
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09 Apr 2022, 7:45 am

This will be my second very/more lengthy article on "What's Happening in China".
The previous postThe previous post can be seen as almost a defense of the CCP.
This post is entirely an accusation against the CCP.
I hope both posts will get an even amount of attention. Joke.

Disclaimer:
My survey is based on groups active on the Chinese Internet and participating in political discussions.
Internet political issues in China are dominated by 15-40 year olds. It's hard for me to get the opinions of other groups.
China's situation and public opinion are changing at an alarming rate, and this scope is limited to 2021-2022.
This sampling method has resulted in my following investigations being heavily biased towards representing the younger generation and towards extremes. Speech on the Internet is always more dramatic than in reality.

There is a strange political trend on the Chinese Internet: when it comes to diplomacy, most people support the government; when it comes to internal affairs, most people oppose the government.
It is an obvious fact that the living standard of most people in China is not high. The political orientation of the Chinese can be divided into two directions depending on how this fact changes:
A. The western world has usurped too many interests and is plundering the wealth and labor of the third world and suppressing the development of China. To improve the quality of life of the Chinese people must win international competition and complete industrial transformation.
B. China's economic aggregate is actually enough, but wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of capitalists and the government. To improve the quality of life of the Chinese people must limit power and pay attention to the distribution of wealth.
This is what some call the political spectrum. The closer to the A side, the more support for the government, and the more likely it is to use the West as an imaginary enemy. Getting closer to the B end means more attempts to "improve" the government or pursue immigration opportunities (depending on their personal circumstances and level of optimism).

Note: someone being on the B side doesn't necessarily mean they are anti-authoritarian, they may just be against something the authority is doing "at the moment".
Anti-authoritarianism is not a very common political trend in China. It's not because of some unfounded culture or belief, but because of real interests. My current abilities do not support my full summary of their views.

This spectrum explains the aforementioned "Chinese bizarrely oscillating between pro-government and anti-government": the middle part of the spectrum supports the government diplomatically and opposes the government domestically.
This does not correspond exactly to the left and right in the traditional sense. Side A is almost all authoritarian (though they usually call themselves "leftists" or "communists"); put members of side B in the West and they might be called neoliberals, neoconservatives, social democrats or even communists or whatever.
C. The third direction, which has been declining, believes that the low living standards of the Chinese come from the greed of capitalists.
But "we" are popularizing the concept of "who is making the rules", "helping" them and pointing their anger in the "right direction". Then we look forward to seeing what "anger" does. Most C are now incorporated into B.


Stakes: Personally I'm heavily biased towards B: I think internal distribution is the main issue, but I wouldn't completely ignore international competition. This makes my following content significantly biased and only represents the views of the anti-government faction.

One theory holds that the greatest defense against communism is high wages, and that a sufficient middle class can ward off communist tendencies.
And now Chinese folk communism is making a comeback, with some groups opposing the government under the banner of communism/socialism.
These people claim that the current Chinese government has nothing to do with communism, is de facto feudalism, and ironically ask the government to implement "advanced" capitalism.
(This view, while plausible, is clearly radical, given the CCP’s recent efforts to eradicate absolute poverty.)
I think this can represent many problems.
This phenomenon is reflected in China's fertility rate.

I chose crude birth rate for the control analysis. The crude birth rates of Japan and South Korea in recent years are selected for comparison.They have a similar culture to China, 3-4 times China's per capita GDP, and a world-recognized low fertility rate.
South Korea: 6.4‰ in 2018; 5.9‰ in 2019.
Japan: 7.4‰ in 2018; 7.0‰ in 2019.
China: 10.9‰ in 2018; 10.49‰ in 2019; 8.52‰ in 2020; 7.52‰ in 2021.
Image
The first row is: indicators, population birth rate, population death rate, population natural growth rate.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics
Note 1: China's birth rate had a small peak in 2011-2014 - Chinese baby boomers were born in the 1980s. The second small peak was in 2016 - the liberalization of the one-child policy in 2016 brought a small number of "second children" (a number that was much lower than official estimates).
Note 2: We generally guess that the National Bureau of Statistics has "adjusted" the birth rate data in recent years.
The National Bureau of Statistics announced that the number of births in 2021 will be 10.62 million, while the Ministry of Public Security announced that the number of newborns registered in 2021 will be 8.87 million. If the latter calculation is used, the crude birth rate in China in 2021 will be 6.28‰, and the natural growth rate will be -0.9‰.
If this result is to be believed, China's demographic inflection point will actually occur in 2021 or earlier. This is much earlier than previously predicted by Chinese officials, US officials and the United Nations (around 2030).


This thread mainly talks about my perception of social issues that have affected China's fertility rate.
Due to China's lack of communication with the outside world, and its culture and polity that "expects big government to solve all problems", I suspect that some of the following issues that are often used to blame the government on the Chinese Internet are shared by the world. But I can't tell which ones are the specific ones at the moment, so I'll list them all.
Most of China's problems have improved with the advancement of productivity and the times; but some problems have not, and some of them are even getting worse. The question I choose is the latter standard.


content
1. The impact of family planning on culture
2. Gender relations
3. Real estate
4. Labor environment


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SkinnedWolf
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09 Apr 2022, 7:51 am

1. The family planning policy and the college entrance examination (CEE) and high housing prices have brought cultural knock-on effects
A. Family planning policy
In the one-child policy widely applied in the past, a large number of girls were selectively aborted due to China's traditional patriarchal culture, which created a long-term gender imbalance. Most families, especially the middle class, have only one child. But for those women who are alive, the one-child policy has objectively brought them some benefits.

I was born as a female. If I had a brother, I probably wouldn't be able to get as much education as I do now. The widespread and incorrect use of the IUD has brought physical harm to women, but it has also enabled women to quickly get rid of the status of reproductive slaves under the patriarchy and participate in labor.

B. Educational arms race / housing prices
The brutal competition in the college entrance examination makes a child with mediocre talents need a lot of extracurricular tuition to enter a good university. In some backward areas, public schools themselves will extend class hours to encourage all students to learn; in developed areas, public schools have normal class hours, which means that motivated families will spend extra income to send their children to expensive tuition classes. After the state cracked down on private education and training institutions, such private tutoring has become more expensive.
C. The middle class needs to spend all the assets for each child
Not going to a good university or settling in a big city will cause the next generation to slip from the middle class, so expensive cram schools and housing prices can drain a middle-class family's savings. (It is not realistic for a person who needs marriage and childbirth to rent a house forever in China). There is no limit to this expensiveness.
D. Permanently changed the Chinese investment strategy for children
For a family, these burdens can only be carried once, or less. This means that the middle class will have no more children than one.


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magz
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09 Apr 2022, 8:00 am

The trend is worldwide. Across cultures and political systems, people have less children once they reach certain level of development.
It's probably adaptive. When chances for survival of your children into adulthood become close to 100% but the world around you is crowded and competitive, the cost-benefit balance of raising another child shifts towards "better not".


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09 Apr 2022, 8:08 am

2. Gender relations
2.1 The cost of childbirth for women
This paper shows that the birth of a child by a Chinese urban woman will lead to a loss of 6 to 7 years of working time in her life, and the converted income loss will be close to 300,000 yuan. For women with a higher education level, the loss of income from having a child is close to 500,000 yuan. For women living in the first-tier cities of Beijing and Shanghai, the loss of income from having a child is close to 600,000 yuan.
The huge cost of childbirth is obviously an important reason for the ultra-low fertility rate in big cities.
In addition, there is currently no “subsidy for childbearing families” in the general sense in China.

2.1.1 Single-sex maternity leave leads to discrimination against women in employment
There are regional differences in maternity leave in China, and most of them are more than 4 months. Maternity leave is only available to women (a very small number of regions have unimplemented paternity leave for men. Most regions have none.) and are paid leave. Businesses that pay this salary can receive subsidies from the government, but they usually do not fully cover the losses of the business.
Because of this direct monetary loss and the delay in progress caused by workers leaving their jobs uncontrollably, companies are extremely discriminatory against nulliparous women when recruiting. It is legally invalid for a female job applicant to declare or sign an agreement that she is infertile.
In some extreme cases, there are women who bring infertility or sterilization medical reports to participate in recruitment.
What can be seen so far is that the government provides benefits in the form of maternity leave, leaving companies to bear most of the cost. One specific thing companies do to reject costs is to avoid hiring women.
This employment discrimination does not change based on whether or not the job seeker has actually given birth. At present, family planning in China is gradually being liberalized. Although most people would not actually choose to have more children, corporate doubts about women's ability to work have grown because of this policy.

Some radical feminists argue that the government allows this kind of employment discrimination to force women to "return to the family," increasing fertility and reducing unemployment.
My claim to this is to "provide as much paternity leave as possible".
Objections to my claim include "impossible to implement", "can't use women's tasks to undercut men's competitiveness", "wasting China's labor force", and "poor families cannot afford neither parents to work".


2.1.2 Difficulties in childcare cause women to sometimes be forced to give up work
Around 2000, a large number of Chinese state-owned enterprises were transformed into private or hybrid enterprises. This has led to the closure of a large number of welfare child care institutions. Nurseries in big cities only accept children over the age of 3. Private institutions are extremely expensive. Moreover, these institutions give out school hours earlier than the closing hours of most jobs, and often even require parents to attend activities during working hours.
Most Chinese cannot rely on one worker to cover the expenses of a family. Raising young children is a huge problem for dual-earner families.
The most common situation is for the elderly to take care of young children. However, this approach is not realistic for families who are inconvenient to live with the elderly, or the elderly have underlying diseases.
This paper illustrates how the reduction in the proportion of multigenerational households in eastern China in 2002 lowered the female labor force participation rate.
This paper states that in China, grandparents, especially grandmothers, play an important role in maintaining the labor force participation rate of mothers.

Mothers who quit their jobs to take care of young children full-time are another option. However, under the fierce competition in the workplace and the strict age requirements in the workplace, this almost means that the mother will ruin her career.

2.2 Gender segregation
This stems from Chinese traditional culture, and a small part is due to the ascetic tendencies of the Communist Party. Later, because of the pressure of further studies, it was generally forbidden to fall in love before the college entrance examination. Gender stereotypes allow for huge gender differences between hobbies. This means that there is an extreme lack of communication between men and women other than marriage and love.
In addition, a bizarre policy "divorce cooling-off period" will be implemented in January 2021. Along with this, some local governments have begun to restrict the "divorce indicator". This appears to be an attempt by the government to curb the rising divorce rate (another consequence of moral and legal confusion). I haven't seen any voices supporting this policy on the internet, and yet it has been successfully implemented. This policy makes unilaterally initiated divorces extremely difficult and makes temporary property transfers before divorce easier. This further leads unmarried people to be more cautious when entering marriage.

2.3 Gender hatred
I'm a feminist and can't look at this phenomenon objectively, and this part is not for me to tell.
But I'll share the perspective of a now-increasingly influential male online group that I've been following closely:
[url]A. China's high dowry and men's habit of paying the cost of dating
B. The CCP strictly prohibits prostitution and pornography
C. East Asian men are sexually discriminated against in the Western world
This results in Chinese men having the highest difficulty acquiring sex in the world. The Chinese government has allowed this to happen, and even made it happen, with the aim of making women work supervisors and men slaves. Chinese men must seek partners in less developed countries. (but apparently Africa is not considered)[/url]
I do not express any personal comment on the above views.

2.4 Gender imbalance
2.4.1 Reason A: Sex Selection in Children
According to the "2021 China Statistical Yearbook": China's sex ratio of 0-4 years old is 110.98. The sex ratio of 5-9 years old is 113.71. The sex ratio of 10-14 years old is 115.03. The sex ratio of 15-19 years old is 116.12. The sex ratio of 20-24 years old is 116.12. The sex ratio was 112.51. The sex ratio of 25-29 years old was 110.25.
Selective abortion/abortion is the only explanation.
2.4.2 Reason B: Population mobility with gender difference
Large numbers of women move from rural to urban areas. There is a structural imbalance in the matching of men and women.
According to the "population by sex and age" in the "2021 China Statistical Yearbook", the sex ratio of people aged 20-34 in 2020 is 105.35 in cities, 104.02 in towns, and 119.72 in rural areas. According to the gender-disaggregated statistical results of "village household registration", "village is more inclined to elective abortion" cannot fully explain such an abnormal sex ratio.

Although the impact has been greatly reduced, China still has an urban-rural dualism.
Rural culture and institutions (in some areas women cannot get homesteads) have led to a massive migration of rural women to cities. Even traditional women often run away from their husbands (now known as "wife-runners") after giving birth
The dowry custom in China has been revived in recent years (which had been eliminated by Mao).
The more discriminatory regions are, the more inclined they are to demand high dowry. Women who did not flee the countryside could sometimes pick any man. When she got married, her husband chose to curry favor with her indefinitely in order to prevent her from being wasted due to her divorce. Such women are called "rural ladies" by some.
This situation encourages criminal activities of trafficking and incarceration of women in some rural areas.
2.4.3 Criminal activities under gender imbalance
A.multinational bride
This occurs mainly on the southwest border.
Apparently the people involved are not going to talk about it online. I know it exists, but don't understand the specifics. Data from countries with population outflows may shed more light on this.
B domestic trafficking
There are no official statistics on women being trafficked. After the Chinese government cracked down on trafficking in about 2000, there has been no widely concerned female abduction for a long time. The residual trafficking is more inclined to select the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped.
This phenomenon changes in February 2022. "Chained Woman" has sparked a national heated debate. She was chained to the room, suffered from schizophrenia, and had eight children. It was known to the outside world because the eldest son and "husband" posted the family on social media to gain attention.
If the translation software works effectively. Chinese Wikipedia has a comprehensive and accurate introduction to this.
As an aficionado of psychiatry, I doubt that the common claim that "she was tortured to the point of schizophrenia" is true. A practicing psychiatrist I trust shares a similar view with me. He thinks the incident reflects the common experience of poor mentally ill people in China, and thinks she has actually been lucky enough. I reserve my opinion on the second half of his views.


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SkinnedWolf
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09 Apr 2022, 8:28 am

3. Real estate
It's a topic that often provokes strong emotional reactions to fertility crises. I suspect that some of the observational samples only want to settle in large cities and not outskirts, which cannot fully reflect the situation across the country. I am not good at economics, the analysis section is for reference only.

3.1 Fiscal structure
There is no real estate tax in China, and local governments rely on land sales for fiscal revenue. This is called "land fiscal".

There have been calls since at least 2019 for reforms to increase property taxes to replace land finance. This is also my claim. But so far, I don't see any signs of reform.
I don't fully understand the tax composition of other countries. The Chinese government appears to be overly easing in the "asset tax". I don't think I have to explain the impact this has on social justice.
Regarding this issue, the government is currently emphasizing the reform of the "three distributions". I haven't seen results yet.

Land fiscal - the essence of high housing prices is high land prices - the beneficiaries of high land prices are local finance, which is used to rapidly promote local urbanization. (Note: This is not the policy of the central government, but the choice of some local governments.)
This has greatly accelerated the progress of local economic development and infrastructure construction. This objectively has also allowed some middle-class people to rise rapidly due to rising housing prices, and acted as a "capital reservoir".
A: China's rapid infrastructure development relies on land finance to exploit the labor of home buyers and their predecessors. Due to the existence of mortgages, this kind of exploitation will continue for many years, making people afraid to give up their jobs easily. <Very subjective analysis>
B: China has little protection for renters. At the same time, compulsory education services are linked to property owners. A house corresponding to a good school - known as a "school zone house" - would be unbelievably priced.
C: There is currently no culture and support policy for children born out of wedlock in China. More than 90% of births take place in a marital relationship. Because of traditional culture and the current objective conditions of the difference between renting and buying a house, marriage is only expected to be concluded when there is real estate.
All three of the above mean that a family wanting to have children in a big city must buy real estate, preferably with a "school zone." This means that the entire savings of both families is used for down payments, and a significant portion of both young people's income for the next 30 years is used to repay loans (which requires them to actually have good earning power. In extreme cases, This also requires the pensions of four elderly people). This makes these people, especially the male side, afraid to resign in the face of injustice.
The above is not necessarily the purpose of the government. But this is the experience of many people right now.
The above is just a description of buying a house in a remote location in a big city. This contains another problem of extended working hours in disguise, "extreme commuting".
Due to the low level of urban planning in the early stage of China's development, extreme commuting is common in large cities, and the average one-way commute time in Beijing has exceeded 45 minutes.
Quote:
In 36 key cities across the country, more than 10 million people are suffering from extreme commuting of more than 60 minutes, accounting for 13% of the commuter population.

Large urban cores are "impossible" for most people. In third-tier or smaller cities, the situation eases slightly, but it also doesn't compare favorably with local incomes. Moreover, many high-paying industries only provide jobs in first-tier cities.
Assuming that an apartment with an average local price is purchased at the average local salary, the calculation results are as follows:
First-tier cities: In 2017, buying an 80-square-meter apartment in Shanghai required 48.5 years of work without any expenses and taxes.https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/57925987
Second-tier cities: In 2020, buying a 120-square-meter apartment in Chengdu requires 25 years of work without any expenses and taxes. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/447976748
These are large and poorly planned cities. The location of an "average" house price usually means a one-way commute takes about 60 minutes in Shanghai and about 40 minutes in Chengdu.
Because of the huge gap between rich and poor, not so many people get an "average" wage.


3.2 Off the plan housing
I didn't find specific data. According to a commentator, the existing houses and plan houses traded in China are about 1:7. "plan houses" are properties that have been sold before the condo is completed.
Once the developer's capital breaks or goes bankrupt and the apartment is not completed (this phenomenon is called "unfinished apartment"), then the buyer's life or even two generations of labor will not be compensated, and even need to continue to pay for the project. Planting an unfinished building to repay the loan, otherwise it will leave a credit taint.<Video evidence of special interviews with self-media>
This bankruptcy of the developer is not held to legal responsibility for other issues. Some think it's the government protecting developers in order to sell the land. The local government is eager to sell the land, and will allow developers to purchase with loans, resulting in a greatly increased risk, and this part of the risk is passed on to the purchaser.
Such "unfinished apartments" can be found all over the country, some in bustling city centers.
I have received some reports in recent years that government sales of land in certain areas have started to pass in auctions. It's unclear if it's because only outer suburban land is available for sale, or if developers' appetite to build real estate has declined. Whatever the reason, it's a hint that the "land fiscal" is dying from some areas.
I reproduce an interesting point about the real estate system:
Quote:
In 2010, a wise man in the system, KK, predicted that the government would monopolize the rental market through a large number of public rental housing and subsidize the finances. It turns out that kk greatly overestimated their IQ. Due to serious institutional loopholes, most of the fruits of China's economic development in the past ten years have been taken away by "bad money" real estate speculators who bought thousands of houses in full at one time and "Li Ka-shing" who hoarded land without development. Some have moved abroad. Even they can only eat the leftovers of interest groups, and rely on the more extreme exploitation of the proletariat to make ends meet. That's why the proletariat still can't afford to buy a house by working in the "996" way.


3.3 Cut off supply
The epidemic has led to the general death of stores. The state cracked down on after-school tutoring. Some industries unconditionally dismiss 35/40-year-old ordinary employees.
This has resulted in more and more houses being confiscated by banks.
In 2017, the number of foreclosure houses in the country was only a few thousand. In 2018, the number of foreclosure houses was around 20,000, and by 2019, it will increase to 500,000. However, in 2020, the number of foreclosures nationwide reached 1.27 million. By the end of 2021, there will be more than 1.6 million units. <Trading platform data>
Suspension of a mortgage is similar to unfinished housing in that it causes a family to lose most of their lifetime earnings. This is likely to prevent a pregnancy that should have occurred.


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You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
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09 Apr 2022, 8:40 am

4. Labor environment
Many animals know not to breed when it's hard to feed themselves.
Generally speaking, with the development of economic level, the rights and interests of laborers will be more protected. However, the working environment has deteriorated significantly in recent years.
A concept that is frequently used on the Chinese Internet, called "involution". The term means a competition among peers to put in more effort to compete for limited resources, resulting in lower returns for individual efforts.
China has labor laws that look pretty good. However, the CCP will not spend its energy on law enforcement when companies violate labor laws. (At the same time, it is illegal to strike and organize unofficial trade unions - rallies are prohibited. "Communist" countries.)
This is widely manifested as unlimited overtime/disregard of statutory holidays and non-payment of overtime.

Other performance:
"Malicious begging for wages" - "Malicious begging for wages" first appeared in the official around 2004. In November 2005, the Beijing Municipal Construction Committee held a press conference and stated that it would impose severe sanctions on "malicious wage demands". The Chinese irony against this official statement is "good faith arrears of wages".
"Extraordinary rights protection" - In order to curry favor with companies, some local governments have developed "blacklists" to record workers who "excessively" apply for labor arbitration.
Quote:
To be included in the "Laborer's Rights Protection Abnormal List", the following conditions shall generally be met:
Within three consecutive years, 10 or more complaints have been filed with the same labor security supervision department, or 15 or more complaints have been filed with different labor security supervision departments.

"Unemployment at 35" - Many large corporations lay off non-managers over the age of 35 each year. This even occurs in public institutions - there is a "promotion or leave" system for young university teachers, and young teachers in first-class universities need to compete for the number of papers during their tenure,only the top 3% can be hired for life, and the rest will be fired. In addition, other permanent government employees are also required to be under the age of 35 to enter the job.

The most famous word to describe unlimited overtime is "996" in the Internet industry, working 12 hours a day, six days a week. I have heard some reports in the West about this.
This does not mean that the Internet industry is the worst, but because the Internet industry has more opportunities to use social media, it is easier to get attention. In my industry - engineering design - the 996 is even already a benevolence. It is very common for my colleagues to work overtime until two in the morning, and there are also reports of sudden deaths. Many other industries are not optimistic.
Chinese officials have symbolically given companies some warnings in recent years, and will "observe" the company building from the outside at night to see if overtime is being worked (which is ineffective). Other than that, there isn't any effective enforcement that I've observed. Therefore I do not recommend to rely on any statistics (if any) on the average working hours of Chinese companies. No one can count the real numbers. The common practice of enterprises is to ask employees to clock in after the theoretical off-duty time and continue to work overtime; if the government starts to investigate and punish overtime, turn off the lights and continue to work overtime.
This has led to a huge preference for "internal" occupations such as government establishments - mainly teachers/doctors/civil servants. The data shows that the average competition ratio of each post in the national civil service examination has reached 1:37, and the better posts generally reach 1:100. This reflects the extremely harsh labor environment "outside", forcing college graduates to flock to "inside".

In most of the above jobs, communication uses social software or even voice calls instead of email. This means that employees need to respond to boss requests during off-hours. At the same time, communication details cannot be recorded, which makes rights protection more difficult.

The above only describes the population with at least a bachelor's degree. For a real "sweatshop", I quote from other people's descriptions:
Quote:
Two shifts (that is, 12 hours a day), 1-2 days off per month, no labor protection facilities, no five insurances and one housing fund.
The monthly income is 6000RMB in large coastal cities and 3000RMB in inland areas.

(How are the industrial goods that supply the world made?)
China has too much labor, and every industry has a large number of unemployed. So capitalists (and perhaps the government behind them) don't cherish every specific worker. They only choose the best and squeeze them - if one of them is squeezed out, new ones will soon be filled.

But the above is my faction (the allocator) view on this issue. Regarding the attitude of the opposition (the competitors), I quote a representative speech:
Quote:
The current domestic labor supply is not a total problem, but a structural problem.
It is the contradiction between the low-quality manual workers needed by enterprises and the people's rising career expectations; it is the gap between the slowly rising wage level and the people's income expectations.
There is only one solution: equal or even surpass the United States in technology and industry, reap the benefits of the world, and provide more jobs with high salaries and high benefits.


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Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
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09 Apr 2022, 8:45 am

My opinion is the same as that of Lee Kuan Yew (he systematically addressed the issue of fertility in Singapore, I don't know the English version of the information, so I won't give a specific link). I can also analyze a lot of the problems that have caused our country's fertility rate to fall below the intergenerational level, but I don't have any constructive comments. The above problems need to be improved, but according to the experience of other countries, solving these problems will not return the fertility rate to the hoped value. So the topic of fertility is only used in political debates in China to vent dissatisfaction with the government and the status quo. This is why the above seems so anti-government.
The problem in development is not necessarily the will of the government. But for the experiencer, this is the real problem.
Maybe the CCP can "create another miracle"?

A. The problem of fertility has brought about an aging crisis that "has come and will be more severe in the future". According to the "China Statistical Yearbook", in 2020, the number of people over 65 years old in China has reached 13.5%, a year-on-year increase of 0.9%.
B. Unlike many western countries, China can directly or indirectly transfer some low-end labor to other countries. China is not a country favored by immigrants, and no immigration wave can fill such a large labor gap.
C. China's past poverty and current poor labor conditions have led to poor health conditions for the elderly.
If there is no revolutionary technological breakthrough, the above three points will inevitably lead to the collapse of China's future pension system. This fact will not be changed by any policy. If you choose not to have children, how to care for the elderly is an unavoidable problem.
And that question has been sidestepped in political discussions.

A frequent phenomenon is that when a young man is still in high school or just entering college, he is a fanatical supporter of the government; when he is close to graduating from college or just starting a job, he is vehemently criticizing the government.
I have seen this happening from time to time. A teenager will think that a "strong country" means a good life for himself; when he is needed for work or family changes, he begins to think that he is just the "fuel" used to push the "strong country".

Due to traditional culture, there is a common belief in China that "this generation suffers in order to make the next generation live better" and "work hard when you are young and enjoy life when you are old". This has left generations of Chinese working hard in harsh conditions.
Will the next generation really live better? Can you really enjoy life when you are old? This is an unpredictable problem at a young age. When we can really see whether it is better, the person concerned is already an old man who no longer works, and the suffering he has suffered can no longer be changed.
I think this is the de facto religious belief in China. To endure the suffering of this world for a paradise without promise.
Poverty in the past. Now it's "involution". Countless Chinese are so exhausted from the struggle for a living that they don't have the luxury of thinking about what's going on at the macro level.
Many in this generation have realized that this is likely to be nothing.
They refuse to endure hardship or even bear children. They are dissatisfied with the status quo, but powerless to change it. They frequently use "run" to express their desire to leave China, and use "win" to satirize the CCP's grand narrative. They profess to reject consumerism and pursue maximum personal preference with minimum labor.
This concept is called "lying flat".
The official media deliberately distorted the original meaning of the word "lying flat".
This may be because they panic about it.
The "three distributions" reform and "industrial transformation" are underway. I will wait and see.

Personally, I think China is copying Japan's path. This is much like a precursor to Japan's "low-desire society." It's a pity that I don't currently meet a Japanese-born resident on WP to discuss this point further.


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naturalplastic
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09 Apr 2022, 9:03 am

WOW.

A lot of text to digest.

Its too bad that they took away the blog feature on this site.

This would be great for a blog (or even for a book), but a bit much for just a post on a thread.

There is one, and only one, person from Japan on this site that I am aware of. I remember the cartoon character on his avatar, but not his name.

Magz is right that the whole industrialized world is trending to low birthrates.



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09 Apr 2022, 9:05 am

China's problem: sterilization before it's rich.
That's why I've listed comparisons with Japan and Korea.
China's per capita GDP is much lower than them, but it has a fertility rate on the same level as theirs.


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09 Apr 2022, 12:31 pm

Ive read, and run accross vids, that talk about how China's harsh "one child policy" just "speeded up something that was going to happen anyway". Birthrates falling due to modernization, and urbanization. But you're saying that this fall in fertility is happening before it "should" have in China - if you go by China's neighbors- because China still hasnt caught up to South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, in affluence, but has already caught up to them in lack of babies.

Maybe China has the worst of both worlds- urbanization AND poverty. You dont need kids to help out on the farm now because you now live in the city and work at a factory, or an office, or a store. But you also dont have income to support kids anyway.

Or to put in terms used by your economics professor: back in the old days (in the US, China, everywhere) a child was a "capital good" (like a tractor used in production) because you needed the hands for work on the farm, but in an urban society a child is a "consumer good". But in a poor urban society you cant afford as many consumer goods. So that might explain the faster descent of the birthrate than expected.



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09 Apr 2022, 1:15 pm

Sadly. I don't see a way out.

The sharp drop in fertility levels this year portends a deterioration in demographics, preventing China from becoming a better economy. (either to upgrade the industry or to win international competition)
And China's population size and level of poverty mean that it's impossible to replenish enough labor from outside.
Deindustrialization is impossible.Simultaneously, China's natural environment and population density are difficult to support a high level of counter-urbanization.

Perhaps these problems can eventually be raised to Nordic levels(except population density) to keep fertility at a barely acceptable level.
However, the fertility rate will inevitably continue to deteriorate in this process. The resulting economic losses will make these problems difficult to solve.
This seems to be a vicious circle.
And this chain reaction will happen in my lifetime.


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09 Apr 2022, 6:04 pm

No disrespect to Chinese people but is it really bad if their overpopulation is reduced? I realise it may cause a demographic problem (too many retirees and not enough workers to support them) but surely this problem is only temporary. Once the population stabilizes at a lower level the number of retirees will eventually be proportional to the number of workers.

SkinnedWolf wrote:
Sadly. I don't see a way out.

The sharp drop in fertility levels this year portends a deterioration in demographics, preventing China from becoming a better economy.

Maybe. But China's economy has been growing at an exponential rate. I'm quite impressived by China's economic growth over the last 40 years. Won't this continue?


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09 Apr 2022, 6:05 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
There is one, and only one, person from Japan on this site that I am aware of. I remember the cartoon character on his avatar, but not his name.


I believe you are thinking of 1986?


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09 Apr 2022, 6:14 pm

RetroGamer87 wrote:
No disrespect to Chinese people but is it really bad if their overpopulation is reduced? I realise it may cause a demographic problem (too many retirees and not enough workers to support them) but surely this problem is only temporary. Once the population stabilizes at a lower level the number of retirees will eventually be proportional to the number of workers.

SkinnedWolf wrote:
Sadly. I don't see a way out.

The sharp drop in fertility levels this year portends a deterioration in demographics, preventing China from becoming a better economy.

Maybe. But China's economy has been growing at an exponential rate. I'm quite impressived by China's economic growth over the last 40 years. Won't this continue?

reduce. required. Otherwise there would be no such radical one-child policy.
But this has to be a "soft landing".
Even disregarding this could lead to a decline in the international standing of the economy. We cannot pass on our low-end labor to other countries, and the rapidly deteriorating demographic structure will seriously affect our productivity - meaning a series of life problems.

China's past economic growth has largely benefited from the arrival of the largest baby boomer (1970) into the labor force. They will not continue to labor for long.
The introduction of the one-child policy in 1980 meant that the following generations themselves were in a cliff-like decline—so China itself has an extremely unhealthy population structure.
A young couple supports four or more elderly people, one or no children. At the level of China's economy, this would be an extremely dire sight.


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09 Apr 2022, 6:18 pm

that1weirdgrrrl wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
There is one, and only one, person from Japan on this site that I am aware of. I remember the cartoon character on his avatar, but not his name.


I believe you are thinking of 1986?

I know him and he's rarely involved in PPR.
And he seems to have immigrated to Japan from northern Europe.


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09 Apr 2022, 6:22 pm

that1weirdgrrrl wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
There is one, and only one, person from Japan on this site that I am aware of. I remember the cartoon character on his avatar, but not his name.


I believe you are thinking of 1986?



Yeah. That sounds right.

Well I guess that he isnt a real Japanese then. Oh well.

Thats always amazed me how there are so few (basically zero) people from Japan on this site. They have half of the population size of the USA. But you never see any Japanese here. WP is skewed to English speaking countries. But Finland is a non English speaking country and it has a large presence on this site (and it has about the same population size as the state of Maryland).