Why China’s shrinking population is a big deal -- counting the social, economic and political costs of an aging, smaller society

The large number of aging parents with only one child to rely on for support will likely impose severe constraints – not least for the elderly parents, who will need financial support. They will also need emotional and social support for longer as a result of extended life expectancy.

It will also impose constraints on those children themselves, who will need to fulfill obligations to their career, provide for their own children and support their elderly parents simultaneously.

Responsibility will fall on the Chinese government to provide adequate health care and pensions. But unlike in Western democracies that have by now had many decades to develop social safety nets, the speed of the demographic and economic change in China has meant that Beijing struggled to keep pace.

As China’s economy underwent rapid growth after 2000, the Chinese government responded by investing tremendously in education and health care facilities, as well as extending universal pension coverage. But the demographic shift was so rapid that it meant that political reforms to improve the safety net were always playing catch-up. Even with the vast expansion in coverage, the country’s health care system is still highly inefficient, unequally distributed and inadequate given the growing need.

Similarly, social pension systems are highly segmented and unequally distributed.

How the Chinese government responds to the challenges presented by this dramatic demographic shift will be key. Failure to live up to the expectations of the public in its response could result in a crisis for the Chinese Communist Party, whose legitimacy is tied closely to economic growth. Any economic decline could have severe consequences for the Chinese Communist Party. It will also be judged on how well the state is able to fix its social support system.

Indeed, there is already a strong case to be made that the Chinese government has moved too slowly. The one-child policy that played a significant role in the slowing growth, and now decline, in population was a government policy for more than three decades. It has been known since the 1990s that the Chinese fertility rate was too low to sustain current population numbers. Yet it was only in 2016 that Beijing acted and relaxed the policy to allow more couples to have a second, and then in 2021 a third, child.

This action to spur population growth, or at least slow its decline, came too late to prevent China from soon losing its crown as the world’s largest nation. Loss of prestige is one thing though, the political impact of any economic downturn resulting from a shrinking population is quite another.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Feng Wang, University of California, Irvine. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.

Feng Wang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.