China’s Two Child Conundrum

Last October, at the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee’s fifth plenum, Beijing officially scrapped the one child policy. Now all married couples in China are permitted to have two children (unmarried women, as always, are officially discouraged from having any children at all). The change marked a telling turnaround: after decades of exhorting (and coercing) families to limit themselves to one child, now Chinese officials are urging couples to have a second child. In the 1980s, having only one child was held up as an example of doing one’s civic duty; today, having two children is the patriotic thing to do.

Why is Beijing increasingly desperate for its citizens to have children? Because the country is facing a demographic crisis. As of the end of 2015, 222 million people in China were 60 or older, 16 percent of the total population. By 2020, that figure will rise to 243 million; by 2030, it’s estimated that over 30 percent of China’s population will be over 60. By 2050, the Paulson Institute estimates that China will have only 1.6 active workers for every retiree; currently the ratio is nearly 5 to 1.

The aging population will have huge consequences for China’s economy, both by squeezing the labor pool to record lows and by increasing the amount of spending necessary for China’s social security network. At the fifth plenum, alongside announcing what has been dubbed the “two child policy,” China’s leaders revealed a plan to extend social security (literally “old-age insurance” in Chinese) to the entire elderly population. Currently, the pension system is implemented by local governments, meaning the rural-urban wealth gap extends into retirement – and that’s not to mention the tendency for cash-strapped local officials to “borrow” funds for the budget from pension accounts. The social security reform and the two child policy are both methods for dealing with China’s aging population.

Clearly, Beijing can see the looming demographic crisis just as clearly as external analysts. The question is whether China’s government can actually do anything to forestall it. The general rule, played out around the world from Europe to East Asia, is that more prosperous, more urban societies see birth rates fall. China is not immune to this trend. According to figures from the World Bank, fertility rates in China (the number of live births per woman) began a sustained decline in 1987 -- nearly ten years after the one child policy was introduced, and right as China’s economic reforms began speeding up. In 1987, the fertility rate was 2.7; it bottomed out at 1.4 in 2000. In the last 16 years, it’s stayed more or less constant, moving up slightly to 1.5 by 2014. That remains well below the rate of roughly 2.3 births per woman required to keep China’s population stable, and dangerously close to the low fertility “red line” of 1.3 births per women.

The two child policy was supposed to be a step in the right direction. The problem, however, is that many Chinese couples, especially those in urban areas, are increasingly deciding that one child is enough expense and effort. Articles about women questioning the wisdom of a second child abound on Chinese media. One piece, published on the Sohu news outlet, features a woman saying of her friend, “Ever since she had her second [child], I’ve felt that she is aging at light speed.” The Ningbo Daily was also less than encouraging when it noted that the number of new mothers admitted to the ICU in one city climbed nearly 15 percent year on year, largely due to the number of older women (over 35 years old) giving birth. That’s apparently a nationwide problem; Caixin reports a 30 percent increase in maternal deaths, in large part due to older women giving birth to a second child.

With many parents reluctant to oblige, local governments in particular are trying everything to encourage more births. As Emily Feng noted in a previous article for The Diplomat, that includes extending both maternity and marital leave. According to a 2012 law, women are entitled to 98 days of maternity leave; individual provinces have recently offered generous extensions of 30 days or more (in Fujian, women can receive up to 180 days of leave). Increasingly, paternity leave is also being provided, although for a far shorter time (typically around two weeks, although it varies from 7 to 20 days depending on the province).

Other places have tried a more direct route. The government in the city of Yichang, in Hubei province, posted a letter online urging Party members to do their part. "Young comrades should lead by example" and have two children, the letter, written by the Health and Family Planning Commission of Yichang, said. It also urged Party members too old to have a second child to “educate and urge their children” to do so. Billboards urging couples to take advantage of the new policy are also common: “The nation advocates every husband and wife to raise two children” is a typical slogan.

These two competing efforts reveal the mixed impact of the two child policy on Chinese women. On one hand, Beijing’s sense of urgency regarding raising the birth rate is leading to better maternity leave policies across the board, in addition to more family-friendly policies when it comes to health and childcare. Yichang City, in the open letter, promised free fertility counseling and gynecological exams for all women.

However, the flip side is that women face increasing pressure from government propaganda to marry young and have two children – not to get advanced degrees and pursue careers, as an increasing number of women have chosen to do in recent years. As Leta Hong Fincher revealed in her book Leftover Women, Chinese state media has been hard at work stigmatizing “professional, educated, urban women in their mid-twenties and older […in order to] pressure them to marry and have a child.”

Now that Chinese women are expected to have not one but two children, that pressure will only increase.