China's Population Aging Rapidly
China is heading for an elderly population crisis with over 60s now accounting for more than 13 per cent of the population and the country’s ‘one child’ policy meaning there are not enough younger people to support them.
The first national census for a decade revealed demographic problems that could derail China’s booming economic growth and which are placing a heavy burden on young Chinese.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there has been a sharp spike in older Chinese, with the percentage of over-60s rising by nearly three percentage points to 13.3 per cent of the total population, or 178 million people. At the same time, there was a sharp drop in the number of young Chinese, with under-14s making up just 16.6 per cent of the population, down from 22.9 per cent at the last count.
Meanwhile, the total population of China has swelled over the decade by 73.9 million – more than the population of the UK – to 1.37 billion people.
China’s ageing problem is not yet as acute as Britain’s, where 16 per cent are over 65, and 19 per cent under 16, but nor is China’s economy as developed.
In the country’s one-child families, many children feel increasingly trapped by the responsibility of each caring for an “upside-down pyramid” of two parents and four grandparents.
“I have been thinking about China’s ageing problems for some years,” said Zheng Aiwen, a 22-year-old fashion design student in Shanghai.
“As soon as I saw the census results, I thought I have to hurry up and get married and have children, two if possible. I am quite worried about the economic pressure of caring for my parents and also about not being supported myself in my old age,” she added.
The release of the census is likely to stimulate more debate about relaxing the one-child policy.
“It is clear that policy-makers are moving slowly towards allowing families to have a second child,” said Professor Du Peng at Renmin university’s Population and Development Research centre.
Officials believe that without the one-child policy, which actually allows many in the countryside and some in the cities to have two children, the Chinese population would have swelled by an unmanageable extra 400 million people over the last 30 years.
In a meeting of senior leaders ahead of the release of the census, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, vowed that the country would adhere to strict family planning and a “low birth rate”.
For many parents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the three cities which are among those ageing most rapidly, rising prices have made it all but impossible to afford more than one child anyway.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8480597/Chinas-population-ageing-rapidly.html
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“problems that could derail China’s booming economic growth and which are placing a heavy burden on young Chinese.”
What you mean like having enough food to eat now there are not too many for the land to support. At least China did something about their overpopulation problem ensuring the ‘young’ have a future.