CHINA: China's population growth in the decade to 2020 has slowed slightly from official records since the 1950s, increasing pressure on Beijing to tighten incentives for couples with more children and to avoid irreparable decline.
As growth has slowed since the introduction of the one-child policy in the late 1970s, the 2020-year census results, published Tuesday, show that China's continental population has increased by 5.38% to 1.41 billion.
That compares with a 5.84% increase to 1.34 billion in the 2010 census, and a double percentage increase in all six previous official Chinese surveys since 1953.
The figure means China has lost what it set out in 2016 to increase its population to 1.42 million by 2020. In 2016, China replaced its one-child policy - initially set to curb the outbreak at the time - with a child with two children at the limit.
In recent months, the Chinese media have been losing sight of the trend, saying that it could begin to decline in the next few years. The United Nations predicts that China's population will continue to rise by 2030 before declining.
But in late April, the Financial Times newspaper reported that people had fallen in 2020 from last year, citing unknown individuals who knew the matter.
The number 2020 was actually slightly higher than the 1.4005 billion by 2019 estimated in a small official survey released in February last year.
China has long been concerned about population growth as it seeks to strengthen its economic growth and boost its prosperity.
One of the brightest areas in the census data was the unexpected increase in the youth rate - 17.95% of the population was 14 or under 2020, compared to 16.6% in 2010.
FALL OF BIRTH RATE
From 2016 to 2019, the annual birth rate has dropped dramatically outside of 2016. China is yet to reveal the 2020 birth rate.
"The dramatic decline in the number of births is a matter of fact, and all forms of evidence support this claim," said Huang Wenzheng, a statistician at the Center for China and Globalization, a think tank based in Beijing.
"It does not take published census data to find that China is experiencing significant birth defects," Huang said. Even if the Chinese population did not decline by 2020, the expert said, "it will happen in 2021 or 2022, or soon."
Urban couples, especially those born after 1990, value their independence and responsibilities rather than raising a family despite parental pressure to have children.
Rising cost of living in China's major cities, which is a major source of child labor due to overcrowding, has also prevented couples from having children.
According to a 2005 report by the state think tank, it cost 490,000 yuan ($ 74,838) in a typical Chinese family to raise a child. By 2020, local media reported that costs had risen to 1.99 million yuan - four times the 2005 figure.
"Having a baby is the strongest obstacle to women's development in my age," said Annie Zhang, a 26-year-old insurer in Shanghai who got married in April last year.
"Secondly, the cost of raising a child is very high (in Shanghai)," he said, in his pre-2020 census. "She is saying goodbye to freedom soon after giving birth."
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