Three piggie wiggies notwithstanding, a younger China is not coming soon

China is likely to lift all its restrictions on family planning, which have been in place for the last 38 years. A government-issued postage stamp of a 2019 happy pig family—with three piglets—was unveiled on Tuesday, indicating that the two-child policy, which in 2016 succeeded the one-child rule of 1980, may be abandoned soon.

It is no surprise since China has been facing a demographic crisis, a direct result of almost four decades of regulated birth policy.

Until recently China reaped demographic dividends due to its massive population, with a large number of working-age people employed in labour-intensive sectors and supporting its cheap exports to the world. But with the noticeable decline in the number working-age people and the cost of caring for senior citizens going up rapidly, China’s economic growth has been slowing down.

Though China replaced its one-child rule with the two-child policy two years ago, the latter seems to have yielded insufficient results. As per China’s official statistics, though there is a considerable rise in newborns but it has been still less than the desired and optimal number of 20 million. The challenge to meet the required population target becomes critical because urbanization, high literacy and modernity are natural factors for lower birthrates.

Besides, boosting the birthrate by giving incentives like childbirth expenses, extended maternity leaves, housing subsidies and discounts on education, has raised China’s financial costs for having a younger population.

By removing all restrictions on family planning, China could bring down its expenditure on the subsidies provided for the two-child policy. However, China is now an overwhelmingly middle class society which has gotten used to low fertility rates. It will not be able to ratchet up fertility rates just on state order. Like Western societies, China will be stuck with its ageing problem for a while. Unless it can ramp up migration, unthinkable for a closed society like China.