Will China’s efforts to address its demographics issue succeed?

Themes: China’s demographic challenges and social policies; the effects of the One-Child-Policy and Hukou System; social reform; the impact of demographics of China’s future economic development.

Concise commentary on complex issues from different points of view.

The UKNCC Guest Contributor Programme offers contrasting ‘short, sharp reads’ for those seeking a fuller exploration of key questions. This issue explores:

“Will China’s efforts to address its demographic challenges succeed?”

Authors, alphabetically by surname:

• Dr. Charlotte Goodburn, Deputy Director, Lau China Institute at King’s College
  London.
• Dr. Yi Fuxian, Senior Scientist, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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perspective.ukncc@pm.me

Will China’s Efforts to Address Its Demographic Challenges Succeed?

Dr. Charlotte Goodburn Deputy Director, Lau China Institute King’s College London

August 2025

Response 1 of 2

The UK National Committee on China (UKNCC) Guest Contributor Programme highlights contrasting responses, by leading authors, to key questions posed by the UKNCC. The programme is designed to stimulate a deeper exploration of China related issues; drive curiosity; and test conventional wisdom.

Contact us at:
perspective.ukncc@pm.me

Unlikely without major structural changes

China’s demographic future is a pressing concern. Faced with an ageing population and one of the world’s lowest birth rates, since 2016 the Chinese government has engaged in a major policy U-turn, from enforcing strict population controls to actively promoting childbirth.

However, despite the lifting of the so-called “ one-child policy” , followed by the adoption of a two-child and from 2021 a three-child policy, China has seen little success in raising birth rates.

Instead, the country’s pro-natalist policies continue to be hampered by fundamental socio-economic structures, policies and ideologies that the Chinese state has so far been unwilling or unable to address.

China’s inability to reverse its demographic decline can be understood through a series of interrelated obstacles.

First, the legacies of the one-child policy have fundamentally altered the structure and expectations of Chinese families.

Second, the high economic costs of childrearing remain a major deterrent to increase birth rates fertility, and have not been adequately alleviated by the state’s policy changes.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, deeper issues of gender inequality and rural-urban divides— manifested in both social attitudes and structural policies—create significant barriers to bigger families.

Despite the state’s efforts, these underlying factors suggest that China’s ambitions to reverse its demographic decline will continue to fall short.

Legacies of the One-Child Policy

For nearly four decades, the one-child policy helped China achieve unprecedented economic growth by reducing dependency ratios and redirecting resources toward economic development.

The reverse is also likely to be true:

China’s economic growth contributed to reducing birth rates, changing family structures and societal norms.

However, the one-child policy leaves long-term legacies beyond a shrinking base of working-age people.

These include a lasting cultural shift, new familial relations and, for many, a distrust of state fertility intervention. Decades of state propaganda fostered a mindset that small families were not only ideal for the nation but better for the family too. Many young Chinese have internalised the belief that fewer children is preferable.

Older generations may have a different view, but changes in family structures have tended to reduce their influence on adult sons and daughters. Meanwhile, to those who experienced coercive family planning implementation including forced sterilisation, abortion and harsh financial penalties, the state’s exhortations to bear more children ring hollow – and for none more than the hidden generation of unregistered children, now adults, born in violation of the policy.

High Costs of Child Rearing: Not Just Economic

The high economic cost of child rearing presents a formidable obstacle to achieving larger family sizes. Chinese cities, especially megacities where jobs and opportunities are concentrated, have witnessed a rapid increase in the cost of housing, education, healthcare and childcare.

A recent comparative study suggested that Chinese families spend 6.3 times their per capita GDP to raise a child until the age of 18, making it the second highest level in the world. Although many provincial and local governments have introduced measures to ease these burdens, such as tax breaks, childcare subsidies and one-off payments for a second or third child, these have failed to address the deeper structural costs associated with child rearing.

Other kinds of costs also need to be considered too. The figures above include only direct costs, and exclude the significant harm to women’s earning potential (the “ motherhood penalty”), as well as the noneconomic costs to parents, particularly women. China’s one-child policy and ultra-competitive school system have led urban Chinese families to focus heavily on education and improving children’s cultural capital, the burden of which falls mainly on mothers – who assume the role of “ project manager” in the competitive enterprise of raising a perfect child. The resulting time and emotional costs, only likely to have increased since the 2021 ban on paidfor tutoring, cannot be overlooked when considering why Chinese women reject larger family sizes.

Fading Gender Equity

More broadly, China’s retreat on gender equity directly undermines attempts to persuade women to have more children. Feminism in China has faced increased political pressures, and the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly framed women’s roles in natalist terms: a stark example was Xi Jinping’s 2023 speech to the National Women’s Congress, where he emphasised women’s roles as family nurturers over their rights to equal participation in work or public life.

The language used in state-sponsored campaigns has drawn heavily on outdated gender roles, urging women to embrace motherhood as their primary duty to the nation.

This rhetoric reflects the government’s failure to ensure gender equity in the labour force. Women in China face substantial workplace discrimination, with limited protections against hiring biases and minimal support for maternity or returning to work after childbirth. By failing to create an environment in which women can balance careers with family life, China effectively deters women from having more than one child – or sometimes children at all. In a country where dual-income households are usually necessary to meet living costs, the choice between career and motherhood becomes an all-ornothing decision.

Rural Women and the Hukou

China’s demographic policies also overlook the disproportionate burden on rural women. The hukou—a household registration system that ties social benefits to one’s place of birth—restricts rural migrants’ access to public services in urban areas. This creates a divide in which rural families, and particularly rural women, are expected to shoulder both work and caregiving responsibilities without access to urban benefits. Rural migrant mothers thus face the “left-behind” dilemma: they must either bring their children to cities, where they have limited access to education and healthcare, and where childrearing must be combined with long hours of paid labour; or leave them in the care of grandparents, often under lessthan-ideal conditions. In the latter case, the burden of caregiving typically falls on elderly rural grandmothers, tasked with raising children without adequate resources or state support. In public discourse, these grandmothers – in essence, the backbone of China’s rural and migrant workforces – are often criticised as inadequate caregivers, contributing to the stigmatisation of rural families. Younger generations may be dissatisfied with grandparental care are unwilling to burden ageing parents with further children to raise.

A Long Road Ahead: Policies Must Address Structural Inequality

China’s demographic problem is a multifaceted one that requires more than just policy shifts in family planning. The economic and social pressures faced by both urban and rural Chinese women, coupled with the structural inequalities embedded in the hukou system and a backsliding on gender equity, have created a formidable barrier that will not be easy to dismantle.

Without substantial reforms to tackle these underlying issues, China’s efforts to increase its birth rate will most likely continue to fall short.

Addressing the cost of childrearing requires comprehensive support systems, including affordable childcare, parental leave, and housing assistance.

Just as critical is a renewed commitment to gender equity in the workplace and in public life, where women must be empowered rather than confined to traditional roles. For rural families, dismantling the hukou and extending public services would be a step towards reducing the structural inequalities that inhibit family life.

These reforms would not only assist the Chinese party-state to overcome its demographic crisis, but would also bring other benefits. Not least, they would help boost party legitimacy with younger generations, women, rural migrants and urban professionals.

Without such fundamental changes, it is not only demography that may prove challenging for China.

Dr. Yi Fuxian Senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

For comparison, in Japan and South Korea the average intended number of children is 2.01 and 1.68, respectively, but the actual fertility rate in 2024 was only 1.15 and 0.75. Barrel theory suggests that the capacity of a barrel is determined by its shortest plank; this is also the case in a society where its fertility rate is constrained by its weakest factors. China’s real population is not the official 1.41 billion, but less than 1.28 billion. If China is able to stabilize its fertility rate at 0.8, its population will drop to 1.03 billion by 2050 and 330 million by 2100, one of the most significant global geopolitical events of this century. At the current rate of growth, the country’s share of the world’s population, which declined from 37% in 1820 to 22% in 1950-80 and 16% in 2024, will fall to 11% in 2050 and 3% by 2100.

It is unlikely that the Chinese authorities will encourage childbearing as coercively as they enforced the one-child policy. Governments can reduce births by forcing people into sterilisation and abortion, but they cannot force people to marry, become pregnant, or undergo infertility treatments, nor can they ban contraception. Mandatory birth control enabled local governments to extract huge fines, while encouraging childbearing requires increased government spending on parental subsidies, child welfare and education.

Furthermore, it takes upwards of 20 years for a child to become a taxpayer. Debt-ridden local governments, therefore, will struggle to simply encourage childbirth, let alone force it, which will only meet with public resistance. Avoiding demographic collapse requires nothing less

less than a social, economic, cultural, and political paradigm shift. It is necessary to reform the social security and tax systems and strengthen family values to ensure that childbearing is materially rewarded. To raise birth rates, all shortcomings must be addressed. Chinese authorities however, struggle to identify some of these key issues and face significant challenges in tackling the more obvious ones.

For example, policymakers fail to recognise that there is a biological trade-off, namely that life expectancy and fertility rate are strongly negatively correlated.

However, extending life expectancy is the pursuit goal of social development, and the resulting decline in fertility rate can only be offset by other reforms. The Chinese overnment has introduced its “ new quality productive forces” policy to offset the drag of aging on the economy, but the policy is bound to lead to prolonged education, delayed childbirth, and an increase in DINK (Dual Income, No Kids) couples and singles, thus further lowering the fertility rate. If cities are not transformed to reduce urban population density and housing prices, fertility rate will remain low.But if cities are transformed (demolished and rebuilt), a financial crisis will erupt. Similarly, increasing the proportion of household disposable income in GDP to boost families’ childbearing capacity could weaken the government’s financial resources and power, thereby reshaping China’s political landscape. Such paradigm shifts require the Chinese government to demonstrate sufficient political courage and governance skills and would take at least several decades, but the demographic crisis requires emergency measures.

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