Conversation
05.06.21
What Should China Do about Its Aging Population?
Though it has yet to be released, China’s latest ten-year census is certain to confirm what demographers have warned of for years: A labor crisis looms as the fertility rate remains low and the country ages at a dangerous speed. Five years after the...
Conversation
01.08.20
China: The Year Ahead
As 2019 drew to a close, ChinaFile asked contributors to write about their expectations for China in 2020.
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08.08.18China Stamps Hint at Relaxation of Two-Child Policy with Large Piglet Family
Telegraph
Commentators noted that the scrapping of the decades-old one child policy in 2015, in favour of a two-child policy, was preceded by the release of a stamp for 2016, the Year of the Monkey, featuring two baby monkeys.
The China Africa Project
04.25.18
How Africa Benefits from China’s Rapidly Aging Population
China’s rapidly aging population presents a huge challenge for the country as it needs to find new ways to pay for rising healthcare and social welfare benefits. And that’s where Africa may be able to help. Home to one of the youngest populations on...
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10.27.17An Inconvenient Truth? China Omits Key Figures That May Have Highlighted Its Demographic Time Bomb from Official Statistics
South China Morning Post
A key data series on China’s fertility rate has been axed from the country’s latest statistical yearbook, depriving the public of crucial figures to judge the effectiveness of the country’s two-child policy.
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04.12.17China’s Aged and Sick Flock to a Hamlet Known for Longevity
New York Times
Once a largely undisturbed hamlet hidden in the karst mountains of Guangxi Province, Bama has in recent years become a magnet for China’s sick and aged.
Caixin Media
03.27.17
Expert Doubts Incentives Would Boost China’s Birth Rate
Proposed incentives for couples to have a second baby—including tax breaks and extra maternity leave—won’t lead to a significant spike in China’s birth rate, a renowned demographer said.Liang Zhongtang’s comments come amid growing concerns about the...
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02.28.17China Considers Baby Bonus for Couples to Have Second Child
CNN
The Chinese government may consider giving families financial incentives to have a second child in a bid to reach higher birth rate targets
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02.24.17China Seeks Baby Boom to Counter Sluggish Birth Rates
Financial Times
Chinese authorities are looking at ways to encourage people to have more children, less than 18 months after dropping the country’s contentious one-child policy in a bid to boost birth rates and stave off a demographic decline.
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01.25.17China Likely to Stick to a Two-Child Policy
Wall Street Journal
Government plan cites demographic challenges, with country’s population seen peaking at 1.45 billion in 2030
Caixin Media
08.02.16
Revival, Resistance for National Pension Push
Bridging the “regional divide” that separates affluent and less affluent areas is a main goal as the central government revives a stalled effort to form a nationwide pension system.The State Council, China’s cabinet, laid the groundwork for a...
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04.18.16Left Behind by China’s One-Child Policy
Wall Street Journal
Abolition of China’s family-planning rule came too late for ‘Parents of the Lost Only Children’.
Caixin Media
01.26.16
How Serial Killers Terrorized China’s Disorganized Elder Care Industry
The 45-year-old caregiver was calm on the witness stand, but her words were jarring. He Tiandai admitted during her murder trial that she killed a 70-year-old woman she cared for by poisoning her soup with sleeping pills and pesticide, injecting her...
Media
11.06.15
‘A Brutality Born of Helplessness’
When China finally scrapped its one-child policy after more than three decades of brutality, almost no one lamented its passing. But Paul R. Ehlich, a Stanford-educated biologist and author of the 1968 fear-baiting classic The Population Bomb, was...
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07.23.15China May Adopt 'Two-child Policy, Demographic Timebomb Looms
Guardian
China could be on the verge of introducing a two-child policy, under which all Chinese couples would be allowed to have two children.
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03.11.14Many in China Can Now Have a Second Child, but Say No
New York Times
Many couples blamed the rising cost of living for their reluctance to have more than one child. Some cited a cultural norm that requires husbands to provide an apartment, car and other material riches to a bride, demands that can push families into...
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01.23.14Beijing Population Tops 21 Million
Xinhua
This includes an estimated increase of 100,000 senior citizens every year until 2020.
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10.04.13Population Control Is Called Big Revenue Source in China
New York Times
Nineteen province-level governments in China collected a total of $2.7 billion in fines last year from parents who had violated family planning laws, which usually limit couples to one child, a lawyer who had requested the data said.
Media
09.13.13
Chinese Professor Mocked for Suggesting Elderly Sacrifice Even More
China’s age of retirement has long been a subject of controversy, as the country’s aging population and slowing economic growth have made caring for the elderly an increasingly daunting task. Recently, Yang Yansui, a professor at China’s prestigious...
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09.05.13China Seeks Western-Style Care Amid Explosion of Elderly
Bloomberg
In Confucian tradition, children and grandchildren have cared for the elderly, but with almost 200 million over-60 year olds, and a projection that sees that figure more than doubling in the next 40 years, China faces a deluge of infirm elderly who...
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08.31.12China's Greatest Challenge: Not America, But Itself
Diplomat
As China’s international profile continues to rise in tandem with its economic and political significance, one might conclude that the Chinese public is likely to expect Xi Jinping to carry a higher profile on the international stage. As the leader...
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07.02.12China’s Looming Pension Crisis Spooks Workers
WSJ: China Real Time Report
China faces a pension crisis as its population ages, and that prospect is starting to alarm Chinese workers who are already struggling to pay for education, healthcare and housing. By the time those people who joined the workforce in the 1980s...
Caixin Media
05.18.12
Demography and Destiny
China is facing a demographic reckoning that is approaching a nightmare.For thirty years, the government has been obsessed with keeping population growth down, often resorting to late-term abortions and other brutal measures. The panic now is that...
Caixin Media
04.06.12
China: The Worst Place To Retire
China is facing a crisis over providing for the elderly as its population ages and the supply of labor diminishes.The Beijing News reported in late March that state-run homes for the elderly in the capital are overcrowded. One had 7,000 applicants...
Reports
12.01.10
Can China’s Rural Elderly Count on Support from Adult Children? Implications of Rural to Urban Migration
World Bank
Support from the family continues to be an important source of support for the rural elderly, particularly the rural elderly over seventy years of age. Decline in likelihood of co-residence with, or in close proximity to, adult children raises the...
Reports
12.01.08
The Macroeconomic Impact of Healthcare Financing Alternatives: Reform Options for Hong Kong SAR
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong's rapidly aging population will significantly raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. The authors ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding...
Reports
07.01.07
Guarding Against Fiscal Risks in Hong Kong SAR
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The Hong Kong SAR's government faces the dual challenges of volatile revenue and medium term spending pressures arising from a rapidly aging population. Age-related spending pressures raise long-run sustainability concerns, while revenue...