Chinese authorities are in a fix as they are finding it hard to overcome challenges of declining baby population in the country because of the growing number of millennium youth, particularly women prefer owning pets rather than marrying and having kids due to unaffordable housing prices and high cost of child care.

According to a 2021 White Paper released by China Pet Industry Association, the number of pet owners will reach 62.94 million in 2020—up from 62.8 million in 2019. Of the total Chinese pet owners, 88% are women who are well-educated and enjoying high income per annum, said the consulting firm PwC.
In terms of pets’ numbers, China’s urban areas saw the presence of 100.8 million dogs and cats in 2020—1.7% up from 2019 and 10.2% higher than 2018, the White Paper said, while estimating the pet market to be worth 445.6 billion yuan (US$70 billion) in 2023.

However, more eye-catching is London-based international professional services network, Deloitte’s report. According to it, the number of pet dogs and cats in China is fast approaching 200 million, after their household penetration jumped from 12% in 2012 to 25% in 2021.

Interestingly, cats are winning more hearts than dogs. As per Deloitte report, while the total number of cats stood at 96 million, there were 92 million canines as pets in China in 2021. “Younger generations tend to favour cats more, as dogs require greater responsibilities and more companionship,” Crystal Wang, a financial advisory leader at Deloitte’s China Consumer Products and Retail Sector was quoted by South China Morning Post as saying.

Analysts say this trend of owning pets will receive a feverish support in China as more and more well educated and high salaried urban residents prefer to stay alone, abhorring marriages and having kids as the cost of living is high and working hours are very long in the country. This inclination is particularly very high among youth of ages between 20 and 30.

A survey of 2,905 unwed urban people aged 18-26 by the Communist Youth League in October 2021 found that 43.9% of women had no intention of getting married or were unsure if it would happen, while 24.6% of male wished to remain single. However, among all the surveyed people, there was one strong commonality; they treated their pets as sons or daughters.

This has triggered a major concern among Chinese authorities as the country has entered an era of negative population growth. To fix the problem of declining population growth, they want youth to reverse the trend of remaining unwed and spending life with pets. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s population fell by 850,000 to 1.41 billion people in 2022. In fact, since the 1990s, China’s fertility rate has declined to below the replacement level of 2.1. It was 1.30 in 2020 and 1.15 in 2021. Several studies have found that rising costs of raising children and lack of welfare provisions have been key factors behind China’s low fertility rate.

Fearing its adverse impact on the number of working-age people, which will shrink beyond estimation, and overall economic health of the country will suffer heavily, the Chinese government in recent years has begun to offer incentives such as tax breaks, subsidies for childcare and longer parental leave while discouraging singlehood among youth. Couples are now allowed to have three children. But these measures are falling flat like house of cards. The country’s keen desire for a baby boom is not getting translated into a reality. Instead, on account of increasingly changing people’s lifestyles, it is witnessing a pet boom in urban areas.

According to the Guangzhou based data mining and analysis organisation, iiMedia Research, in spite of economic headwinds, China’s pet industry is all set to grow by 68% to 811 billion yuan (US$116 billion) by 2025, compared with 494 billion yuan this year. With fewer youth see marriage as an important family and social responsibility, it is believed that such projections on the pet industry’s growth are not without a basis. Yet this attitude is not just limited to mainland China, in Hong Kong too, youth choose to pick up life in association with pets rather than marrying and having babies.

Cats are preferred over babies by residents in the city where, as per the United Nations Population Fund, the total fertility rate (TFR)—the number of children women are expected to have in her life time—is 0.8, the lowest in the world. The total number of babies born in the city was 32,500 last year, a drastic decline in the number of births recorded five years ago. In 2017, 56,500 babies were born in Hong Kong. Five primary schools in the city, as per media reports, are on the verge of closure as they lack fresh enrolments in the new academic year.

L'articolo As pets replace babies in China, Beijing scrambles to fix problem proviene da InsideOver.

In a trend that refuses to be stemmed despite the government’s best efforts, the birth rate in China dropped to a record low of 7.52 per 1,000 people in 2021. The previous year, this figure was 8.52, as per the National Bureau of Statistics data. As the country faces the dual problem of a rapidly aging population and a shrinking workforce, the Chinese government has ramped up its efforts to encourage people to have more children.

Most experts blame China’s “one-child” policy, enforced with an iron hand from 1980 to 2015, for this population conundrum. The restriction was intended to limit population growth and conserve resources. But in 2011, China’s working-age population peaked at 925 million and then started to drop sharply. In 2016, officials relaxed the one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children. But it did not lead to the expected baby boom. Then last year, the authorities relaxed the policy further, allowing couples to have three children, in addition to offering incentives and pledging improvement in workplace rules and the early education sector.

Declining population

The changes are yet to bear any fruit. The declining population has now become a serious threat to the country’s economic and social stability even as President Xi Jinping is investing heavily to create global competitors in electric cars and other technologies. So, how big is the population dip problem for China? In 2021, the number of births was just about enough to outnumber the 10.1 million deaths. Compared with 12 million in 2020, only 10.62 million births were reported in 2021. The population grew by a meagre 480,000 to rise to 1.4 billion. In fact, the natural growth rate fell to 0.034%, lesser than even 1961, when a failed economic policy by Mao Zedong had led to widespread famine and tens of millions of starvation deaths. Also, the birth rate was the lowest since 1949, when the Communist China was founded and the statistics bureau began collecting the data.

Many demographers assert that the peak may have been reached already. “The year 2021 will go down in Chinese history as the year that China last saw population growth in its long history,” said Wang Feng, sociology professor at the University of California, adding that the 2021 birth-rate was lower than the most pessimistic estimates. The main issue here is that China’s workingage population is fast declining. The falling birth-rate combined with the increased life expectancy means the number of working-age people, compared with the number of people too old to work, has been falling steadily. This will severely impact the country’s ability to care for its elderly population. Soon, this could all translate into labour shortages, hampered economic growth and reduced tax revenue.

The demographic challenge

Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset management, said, “The demographic challenge is well known but the speed of population aging is clearly faster than expected. This suggests China’s total population may have reached its peak in 2021. It also indicates China’s potential growth is likely slowing faster than expected.” Analysts like Zhang warn that a faster-than-expected aging population could deepen China’s economic growth concerns. In 2021, 267 million people were aged 60 and above in China as compared to 264 million in 2020. On the other hand, as per some demographers, the working-age population might fall to half by 2050. Not surprisingly, China reported that its growth in the last quarter of 2021 had slowed to 4 per cent. Other countries are also reporting a similar population decline. For instance, Japan and Germany also face the challenge of supporting aging populations with fewer workers.

But these countries have invested heavily in factories, technology and foreign assets. China, however, primarily depends on farming and manufacturing for its economic growth and both are labour-intensive sectors. Experts say one more major issue sets China apart from other such countries – the complicated legacy of its one-child policy. When the policy was first implemented in 1979, China’s population was fast approaching the one-billion mark. Local administrations forced millions of women to undergo abortions, terming the second pregnancies illegal as under the state law. In what many term as the history’s largest population control experiment, the policy reportedly prevented nearly 400 million births. Though it contributed to managing the Chinese population, the policy also had an unintended impact– the country has one of the worst gender imbalances in the world today as China has a patriarchal culture and people prefer to have a male child. As a result, fewer women are reaching the childbearing age.

Future predictions

So now the Chinese government is leaving no stone unturned to encourage more births and its tune has completely changed. Last year, more than 20 provincial or regional governments amended their family planning laws to include longer maternity leave for women. Eastern Zhejiang province has mandated 188 days of maternity leave for the third child while in the northern Shaanxi province, a third child can get the mother a-350 day paid leave. Other common incentives include cash handouts, and real estate subsidies.And yet, many Chinese women are not convinced. They say this will make their candidature for work in companies weak as establishments may not want to give their employees so many leaves.

Although recently Beijing promised to prohibit discrimination against working mothers, Chinese women assert that workplace discrimination against young mothers is quite common. Families that need two incomes cannot afford to have more children as it can mean a career setback for them. Also, culturally women are deemed the primary caregivers for children in China and having more children will add more work to their already hectic schedules. So, an increasing number of women are postponing marriage and motherhood and many do not want children at all.In fact, the government’s rigorous efforts are only adding to the anxiety around parenting and marriage. “Unmarried women are increasingly reluctant to get married. If you get married, you will have a more limited set of options,” said Zheng Mu, an assistant professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.

Another hurdle is the high cost of raising children in China. High property prices and rising education costs in the country are a big deterrent for young people considering parenthood. In China, education is still considered the main path to a better life and parents spend most of their earnings on kids’ education. To encourage young couples to have more children, the Chinese government cracked down on the private tutoring industry last year, banning all for-profit after-school tuition centres. Will these measures be enough to bring China’s population back on track? Time will tell.

L'articolo China’s birth rate drops to a record low, experts fear economic instability proviene da InsideOver.

Nobody seems to understand the long-term implications of the phenomenon known as the “demographic winter“, whose impact will be particularly shocking in the ageing Europe. The most populous countries – like Germany, France and Italy – are expected to feel the social and economic repercussions of the crisis of empty cribs only in the distant future, but the matter has a more urgent dimension for the population-scarce and poverty-plagued states of the Balkan peninsula.

Here, in the powder keg of Europe, the demographic winter will hit hard – even more than elsewhere – due to a combination of extremely low fertility, high rates of emigration, widespread poverty and fast ageing rates, against the background of the lack of immigrants and of asymmetric natality trends recorded within some fast-growing ethnic minorities.

Whereas some countries may be doomed to eventually disappear entirely (Moldova and Serbia), others are likely to experience permanent changes in terms of ethnic composition (Romania) and, possibly, even religious affiliation (Bulgaria). Such epoch-making changes, far from impacting solely on societies and economies, are set to exacerbate the Balkans’ fragmentation and the local chapter of the great-power competition.

Vanishing Peoples

The United Nations, the World Bank and, virtually, all European research institutions agree: the Balkans are being hit by the world’s worst depopulation crisis and entire nations may disappear if nothing is done to reverse – or at least to slow – the trend. The situation varies greatly across the peninsula although nowhere the population growth is positive; for instance Kosovo is close to – but still below – the replacement level fertility (2 children per woman, 2017), while Greece records one of the world-lowest fertility rates (1.4 children per woman, 2017) and it has been in demographic recession since 2011.

Bulgaria, now dubbed as the planet’s fastest-shrinking country, lost about two million people between 1989 and 2019 and the overall population is set to record a 15% resizing by 2050. By the end of the century, that is by 2100, Bulgaria’s current population of almost seven million may start feeling the threat of extinction by reaching an estimated level of only 4.8 million. The cause behind the world’s fastest-shrinking country is easy to understand: ethnic Bulgarians are vanishing at a rate of 60,000 less Bulgarians per year, that is 164 fewer per day.

Romania’s population may be almost halved over the same period, decreasing from the current twenty million to twelve million, or it could more than halve according to other estimates, reaching the dramatic level of five to seven million. Moldova is set to follow the pattern of its neighbor, due to the mix of  constantly-low fertility rate and mass emigration. The aforementioned factors, if not solved, might lead the population “to drop by 51.8% by 2100”.

The Western Balkans are in no better situation: population declines are likely to persist in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The former’s population is expected to be cut by 2100, the latter is likely to record a 15% resizing by 2050 and a staggering 38% by 2100 (UN estimates).

New Identities

The Balkans’ identity is going to be rewritten deeply, perhaps forever, by the demographic crisis. Indeed, the self-extinctive trends of some peoples, such as ethnic Romanians and ethnic Bulgarians, is set to benefit ethnic minorities, most notably Romas and Turks, whose child-bearing inclinations haven’t changed in the last decades and are failing to show any signs of decline or stabilization.

Accordingly, countries hosting large Roma communities, like the above-mentioned Romania and Bulgaria, are very likely to witness the disappearance of their own majority’s core historical identity in order to become fully multinational and multi-ethnic states.

Demographers agree: the true size of Roma communities is not captured by the population censuses and they already number in the order of millions. For instance, in Romania they could be up to three million although the 2011 population census estimated they were about 600,000. Similarly, in Bulgaria they could be more than one million against an estimated size of about 300,000.

Roma people may become the major ethnic group in Romania and Bulgaria – and the same trend is being recorded in Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia – because of the concatenation of several factors: constant discrepancy in the fertility rates among Romas (more than 3 children per woman), Romanians (1,64) and Bulgarians (1,54), higher tendency of working-age natives to emigrate, aging processes, and so on.

According to eminent Romanian demographer Vasile Ghețău, Roma people are likely to make up 40% of the country’s total population by the mid-century and they could turn into the major ethnic group in the next two decades. Over the same period, ethnic Romanians are expected to decrease numerically and to face a tremendous ageing process, with one-third of them estimated to be over-65. This ensemble of events makes, according to the demographer, the “ethnic revolution” as inevitable as irreversible.

The same scenario is going to take place in Bulgaria, but at a faster rate. Sofia-based Center for Demographic Policies forecasts a gloomy future for ethnic Bulgarians, which seem destined to be overturned by Romas and Turks by 2050 and to be close to extinction by 2100.

The Geopolitical Challenge

Demography is destiny, that’s why is of fundamental importance to have awareness of what lies around the corner. The disappearance of a country, like Moldova, may encourage regional powers to redirect their agendas elsewhere, but ethnic transitions could attract the attention of forward-thinking players interested in taking advantage of the paradigm shift.

Something suggests that the vanishing of Balkan peoples is unlikely to make the region more stable. In the next future there will be fewer inhabitants, true, but the ethnic and religious composition will be much more variegated and heterogeneous. Accordingly, the already-existing fragmentation and the ever-present tensions along the civilizational fault lines are to grow. Non-EU players might leverage on interethnic divisions to foment clashes, riots and instability useful to advance their geopolitical agendas.

Roma people are increasingly politicized in Hungary and Romania, and their life conditions (segregation, widespread poverty, etc) made them easily exploitable by the Jihadist International as shown by the case of Bulgaria’s Islamist State-loyal Roma community of Pazardzhik. Whereas in Budapest and Bucharest the politicization of Roma people is being driven by powerful NGOs, Sofia’s issue with Romas and radical Islam is much more complex and represents an alarming precedent.

The Pazardzhik scandal was later used by the then-government to reform the Bulgarian Islam and, eloquently, to oust Turkey from the country’s Muslim network. Questions arise spontaneously: “was Turkey actually playing a (malicious) role within that Roma community?”, “could Roma people be weaponised elsewhere?”. If the answer to both questions is yes, then the new Balkan wars may be around the corner.

L'articolo Balkans 2050: Mirror of a New and Unrecognizable Europe proviene da InsideOver.