China Birth Rate Falls To Lowest Since 1949 (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180614388
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/144215/china-birth-rate-falls-to-lowest-since-1949
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/19/china-population-falls-again-birthrate-record-low
Beijing has also imposed a 13% value-added tax on contraceptives this year. The government is betting on automation and productivity to offset the shrinking workforce -- China already leads the world in robot installations -- and President Xi Jinping has written that population policy must transition "from being mainly about regulating quantity to improving quality."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/19/china-population-falls-again-birthrate-record-low
Welding people into their houses will do that (Score:1)
Don't underestimate the unquantifiable sentiment one has about one's country in the very personal decision to have children.
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what do you mean?
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I believe he means that people who see themselves treated as nothing but interchangeable industrial production units don't rush out to have kids unless they have strong religion telling them to do it anyway. Which "progressive" countries don't.
EU & US following suit (Score:2)
Let's not miss that
- US fertility rate in 2025 is China's in 2019
- EU's China's in 2020
West is heading there pronto..
Re: EU & US following suit (Score:2)
For people to have children they need living space and financial stability. That is hard when all jobs move to the cities. You cant have kids and long commute times either. But due to high specialisation in the job market the jobs have to be in major cities.
Brave New World (Score:3)
My little theory is that China will at some point go hard on industrial production of humans, possibly the old school way (enslaving women, most likely in neighbouring countries) but more likely via technology & life sciences - in vitro fertilisation and artificial wombs. I've no idea how feasible that is - probably not very - but I bet they'll give it a good try.
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There are a lot of reasons to think that those things would be disastrous as the body has many ways to weed out poor eggs and sperm which IVF doesn't. The usual argument is 'well, it doesn't matter because we'll just edit the DNA ourselves', but human DNA is insane spaghetti code which we're unlikely to be smart enough to figure out.
I think our rulers are betting on artificial wombs and DNA editing to replace human reproduction, but I doubt it will work any better than their plans of replacing everyone with
Spiky, weird demographics (Score:2)
If yo got o wikipedia, you can see each countries demographics.
China's is weird and spiky, easily allowing you to see the effects of government regulations.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
For comparison, look at India, which looks far more typical, like the tops of an St. Basils Catherdral:
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
Women in the workforce (Score:2)
You have to have women in the workforce or your country cannot compete with other countries. And you have to compete with other countries because otherwise sooner or later they build up enough military to invade you. We could all just work together across nation borders but then we couldn't have billionaires and mega yachts so that's out the door.
The trouble is as soon as you put women in the workforce you kind of have to give them civil rights. Otherwise they're just not very effective workers.
And
Good news for the real estate industry (Score:3, Funny)
Chinese people can now buy a 3rd, 4th and even 5th home at a discount to bail up the property sector.
Imagine the joys of having no siblings, less women than men whilst owning 3 homes and a social credit score system that means the government's your best friend.
The unstoppable rise of China is quite unstoppable until we suddenly notice it actually started stagnating a while back...anyhow I'm sure reunification rhetoric with Taiwan will redirect the Masses' anger away from the government.
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The solution for China is pretty straight forward. Step away from the "Boys first" culture.
Give every family that has a child money, and encourage having both boys and girls.
This entire culture of having only boys and aborting girls if they don't have a boy, is why their population is declining. So you end up with towns and cities where there is a huge mismatch between genders and ages.
But what's killing Chinese people is the same thing killing Americans. Women live longer, so the census reflects a higher
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> Give every family that has a child money, and encourage having both boys and girls.
It's been tried. It doesn't work; it boosts birth rates a little, but not enough to make a real difference once your population is already collapsing.
Two things seen proven to boost birth rates: strong religion and eliminating womens' rights. China's current high population exists because Mao told women to have lots of children back when he was a cult figure and communism was effectively the state religion.
"Have kids to
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> This entire culture of having only boys and aborting girls if they don't have a boy, is why their population is declining.
This is a reason, but it's not the main reason. China industrialized extremely fast, which means moving people to the city. When people move to the city they have far fewer kids. Also, most people live in apartments in China, not houses with back yards, which further decreases the willingness to have kids. Who wants to raise a kid in a concrete jungle? China *does* have a lot o
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Please. I understand you live over th' crick, up th' holler, but keep your ignorant prejudices to yourself.
Some of us LIKE cities, and I liked it as a kid. Back yard? I grew up in Philly, with one of the three largest city parks in the world (no, Central Park isn't in the running). And I had huge libraries, and museums, and everything. And taking public transit was cheap, and I didn't require my parents to taxi me around.
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> Some of us LIKE cities, and I liked it as a kid.
Good for you. But that still doesn't change the fact that cities are literally where civilizations go to die.
Cities are IQ-shredders and fertility-destroyers, as proven time and again throughout history.
Re: Good news for the real estate industry (Score:1)
Yes, because the development of cities did not in fact have any effect on population. Don't get me wrong, back in the day when cities got too big, sure, lots of people ended up dying from famine or cholera. But guess what? We didnt just give up on cities.
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We give up on cities when we become unable to maintain them because people--particularly intelligent people--stop having kids.
Those libraries, museums and parks distract the intelligent people so they forget to have sex and make babies, and then after a few generations no-one remembers how to keep the plumbing working to avoid mass die-offs from Cholera.
We're probably past the IQ-shredding stage and into the "how does indoor plumbing work?" stage.
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China, like the EU and the Euro, has been on the verge of imminent collapse for a very long time now.
Most of this rubbish is aimed at keeping the US Dollar the reserve, stable currency that the world relies on, but that time is at an end now.