Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    CHINA loosened its rigid one-child policy last year, allowing every couple to have two babies, to tackle the aging population and declining birth rate. But the latest data have shown that the policy isn’t working the way it is supposed to.

    According to the recently released National 1% Population Survey of China for 2015 of Statistical Yearbook 2016, China’s fertility rate in 2015 was only 1.05 (1.05 births per 1,000 people), meaning that China’s fertility level is already the lowest in the world.

    Given the fact that China’s newborn sex ratio is 1 to 0.9 (male to female), women need to have more children in order to maintain a demographic balance, China needs to achieve a minimum 2.2 fertility rate to prevent a population decline while developed nations need only 2.1.

    In some places the birth rates are even lower. In August 2015, Yichang City of Hubei Province conducted a large-scale fertility survey, which found the local fertility rate was only 0.81 in 2015. The survey was based on 30 percent of the women of childbearing ages with the sampling rate 30 times that of the general fertility rate, so the data were accurate.

    The groundless optimism on the part of the officials with China’s family planning authorities is even more worrisome. On Nov. 5, 2015, Yang Wenzhuang, a senior official with the National Health Planning Commission, asserted that the fertility rate would be between 1.5 and 1.6 for 2015. The substantial discrepancy between the prediction and the actual outcome is an ominous omen that if the cause of the misjudgment is not identified and if the trend is not reversed promptly, China will suffer a grave population decline crisis in decades to come.

    Rather than be alert against the increasingly downward trend, family planning officials have been consoling themselves with ridiculous excuses.

    In response to the general concern about the fact that China had only 16.55 million babies born last year, 320,000 fewer than 2014, the nation’s top health authority attributed the fall to the Year of the Goat, a year considered unlucky in Chinese culture to give birth to babies.

    These confident officials projected that China is expected to welcome 17.5 to 21 million newborns annually in five years. That means 1 to 5 million more babies than in 2015. It is impossible unless the birth rate rises to 1.5 or above.

    Statistical theories aside, we see few factors in real life that may spur the fertility rate. Rather, there are numerous unfavorable conditions.

    First and most important, the base of the population of childbearing-aged women is shrinking rapidly due to the decades-long one-child policy.

    A simple calculation will reveal the bleak future.

    Let’s base the calculation on the number of newborns in 2015, which was 16.55 million. If a half of the babies were female, which is 8.27 million, and each of them were fertile and willing to have a baby, then under the current “one couple, two babies” policy, the maximum number of newborns will be around 16 million in about 20 to 30 years, maintaining the same level with the present one. But considering the following factors, China will inevitably experience a population decline.

    The best scenario of 16 million babies will never happen under the current circumstance. In no way will every woman get married, nor will every married woman bear children. Not to mention that a large percentage of married couple will not raise two children even if they are allowed to.

    The latest data only enables me to make a rough estimate on the number of newborns 20 years from now.

    A previous figure shows that about 3.5 percent of Chinese are childless, thus deducting 580,000 people from the would-be parents. Another figure shows that about 200 million Chinese are single, further downsizing the child-bearing population.

    A study showed that when China in 2013 allowed couples with one of them being a single child to have two babies, only 18 percent of the 11 million eligible couples applied to bear two children.

    There may be some overlapping parts in the above data, but the picture is anything but bright. I anticipate a negative population growth by 2025 at the latest.

    It’s high time for China’s top decision-makers to give up any birth-control measures before it is too late.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)