Population quality, tech advances to ease demographic chasm

There are 150 million fewer people in China in the 1990- 2019 generation than in the 1960- 80s generation, a population gap highlighted by some demographers on Tuesday. The problem will be eased, however, by improving population quality and rapid technological advances, experts said.

Feng Xuming, a deputy director of the Comprehensive Economic Research Department of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, listed a few worrying figures at a Tsinghua Universityhosted forum in Beijing, noting that these trends may lead to structural problems, including labor shortages.

China introduced a one- child family planning policy in 1979 amid overpopulation. It avoided an estimated 400 million births before moving to a second- child policy near the end of 2015, Xinhua reported.

However, the number of births has been dropping each year since 2017. In November, China’s 14th Five- Year Plan ( 2021- 25) proposed again to “lift family planning,” which demographers see as an ongoing trend of inclusiveness.

Peng Xizhe, director of the Fudan University Center for Population and Development Policy Studies, told the Global Times that China’s improving population quality and rapid technological advances will compensate for the negative effects of this trend.

“Nowadays, a reduction of the working- age population has significantly less impact on society than it would have in the past,” Peng noted.

For example, fast- developing technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things have replaced some traditional labor- intensive jobs. The quality of the population is also improving, so that the working- age population will fit into more core positions, Peng said.

Peng suggested that government should encourage young couples to make their own fertility plans.