China’s ‘two sessions’: population decline, rising debt worries to be hot topics for political elite
- China’s population could be surpassed by India’s as early as 2027 due to a declining birth rate, even after its one-child policy was abandoned in 2016
- Beijing is also increasingly concerned about its level of debt, which has risen rapidly over the past 12 months as it fought the impact of the coronavirus
China’s political elite will face a number of challenges when they gather in Beijing next week for the year’s biggest legislative set piece – the meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, informally known as the “two sessions”. In this latest part of a series looking at the key items on the agenda, we examine two of the major problems facing China – a declining population and a rising level of debt.
Just over five years ago, when China ended its controversial, decades-old one-child policy, concerns over a demographic crisis seemed far-fetched.
Fast forward to 2021, and those concerns and a rising level of debt have become two of the biggest issues hanging over the world’s most populous nation, which is also the second-largest economy behind the United States.
China’s low birth rate
Even though the complete 2020 new births and population data has not yet been released, China’s central government has already raised the possibility that its population could be surpassed by India as early as 2027, citing a low fertility rate.
China’s fertility rate in 2019 fell to 1.47 births per woman during their childbearing years, just ahead of Japan which has long suffered from a low birth rate and a declining population.
I think that the words ‘family planning’ will not appear in this year’s government work report just like in recent years. No mention of it means that the birth control policy is being phased out
