That's bad news for the Chinese Communist Party

Can they solve the problem

By forcing people to have babies?

Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chappell.

Last week, the Financial Times  came out with an explosive report.  

It said China's population had declined  for the first time in five decades.

This would be the first time the population  has decreased since the Great Leap Forward.  

That was “Mao Zedong's disastrous  economic policy in the late 1950s  

that caused the deaths of  tens of millions of people.”

Now the idea that China's population has  fallen for the first time in 50 years  

doesn't sound controversial.  But we're talking about China,  

where anything can become a state secret if  the Chinese Communist Party is paranoid enough.

Population growth? State secret.

Real GDP numbers? State secret.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping's favorite  breakfast food? Definitely state secret.

According to the Financial Times, China's  population fell below 1.4 billion in 2020.  

Those population numbers come from  China's latest 10-year census,  

which hasn't been publicly released  yet. The Financial Times got their  

scoop from anonymous sources claiming  to be “familiar with the research.”

They added that “The figure was considered  very sensitive and would not be released until  

multiple government departments had reached a  consensus on the data and its implications.”

Well after the Financial Times ran this story,  Chinese government departments reached a consensus  

on the data. And their consensus was that the  Financial Times is a big, fat lying liar who lies.

China's National Bureau of  Statistics came out with a  

one-line statement saying that  China's population grew in 2020.

And Chinese state-run media were quick to publish  

multiple articles denying  the Financial Times report.

Of course, the actual population  data still hasn't been released yet,  

even though the census was supposed  to be published last month. Look,  

Chinese statistics are an art, not a science.  And everyone knows you can't rush art.

Especially now that they have to  fudge the numbers all over again  

to refute that Financial Times report.

You know what else is an art? Reading  between the lines of Chinese propaganda.  

This Global Times article seems to indicate  that the census really did find that China's  

population was below 1.4 billion. But  they blamed that on a “statistical error.”

According to the Global Times,  

China's population didn't really drop, it was  just never 1.4 billion in the first place.

This is actually plausible. Some experts  have said for years that China's population  

estimates are inflated. One of the reasons  is that local governments are incentivized  

to inflate their population numbers to get  more resources from the central government.

That's a sign of a really functional system.

But the Global Times also said that China's  

population is likely to start  to decline as early as 2022.

Which is pretty interesting. Because previous  government estimates said that China's  

population would start to decline after 2027  or 2029. Suddenly moving that up to next year  

shows this is a bigger problem  than the Party previously admitted.

So it's quite possible China's  population is already declining.  

It's just too politically sensitive to say it now.

But why are these population  statistics so politically sensitive?  

I'll tell you after the break.

Welcome back.

One of the big dangers for the Chinese Communist  Party is that just as they get strong enough to  

become the dominant global power, their internal  problems will trigger a crisis. And China's  

population decline is a big crisis. One that's due  to the Chinese Communist Party's one-child policy.

The first problem is that China now  has too many men and not enough women.  

The common statistic is that there are more  than 30 million more men than women in China.

That leads to things like sex trafficking  women from North Korea and Myanmar.  

We've talked about that before on the show.

The second problem is that China is getting old,  

fast. China's working age population  has been falling since 2011.

If this keeps going, China won't have enough  workers to support its aging population.  

And with China's inadequate  pension and healthcare system,  

that's putting more pressure on  younger people to support older adults.

It's also a big problem for China's economy, which  has been built on having a huge supply of workers.

We've talked before about the  disasters of the one-child  

policy, from the hundreds of millions  of forced abortions and sterilizations,  

to the massive fines that were used  to make money for local governments.

And the tragic thing is, it turns out the  one-child policy was probably unnecessary.  

China's birthrate had already been falling  for a decade before the one-child policy.

But the Chinese Communist Party went ahead  with the one-child policy anyway, creating  

an authoritarian social engineering project  that screwed up their population for decades.

Birthrates started falling so fast that in 2016,  

the Party changed their one-child  policy to a two-child policy.

Now this doesn't mean there was more freedom.  It just meant that people were allowed to have  

two kids instead of one. You still had to,  for example, get a permit to have a kid.

The massive bureaucracy created by the  one-child policy was still there. For example,  

the military, the police, and other state-owned  enterprises all have family planning units.

These family planning units do things like  monitor their female employees' menstrual cycles.  

And you thought your HR department was bad.

But while the two-child policy resulted in  an initial bump in the number of babies,  

ultimately it hasn't worked. In 2019, China's  birthrate sank to the lowest level on record.

It turns out that if you spend 35  years implementing a one-child policy,  

a generation of only children don't really  want to have more than one child themselves.  

Especially because raising a kid  is getting more and more expensive.

The Chinese Communist Party knows this is  a problem. Which is why they're starting  

to act like your mother when she asks you  why she doesn't have grandchildren yet.

Earlier this year, the People's  Bank of China released a report  

calling for the central government  to “fully liberalize and encourage  

childbirth,” meaning abandon restrictions  on how many children people can have.

Now this doesn't mean there will be more  freedom. This is the Chinese Communist Party.  

They're going to use the full power of the  state to make sure people do what they want.

Does this mean that the Chinese Communist  Party will force people to have babies?

Should we get ready for China's baby quotas?

I'll tell you more after the break.

Welcome back. Could the Chinese  Communist Party make people have babies?  

Well, they're definitely going to try.

I'm not saying China's going to go full Handmaid's  Tale. They just don't have enough women for that.

But the Party is already pivoting to  “encourage” people to have more children.

Earlier this year, Chinese premier Li Keqiang  

talked about working to achieve  an “appropriate” fertility level.

Li didn't say exactly what appropriate  fertility levels were, but here's a hint.

State propaganda slogans are telling  couples to “have children for the country.”

Yes, lie back and think of China.  That's probably not going to work.

There are other ideas that might work better.  

“Measures now being discussed range  from extending maternity leave  

to encouraging people to have a second child  with straight cash incentives or tax breaks.”

But possibly not. Similar  policies have been tried in Japan,  

Taiwan, and South Korea  after their birthrates fell.  

Things like baby bonuses, new parental leave  policies, and expanded preschool availability.

And they didn't work.

But if incentives don't work, the  Chinese Communist Party can use  

propaganda and social pressure. One example  of this is the “leftover women” campaign.

That's a propaganda campaign aimed at shaming  educated women into getting married earlier,  

by trying to convince them that if they're  over 27 and unmarried, no one will want them.

And it's worked, in the sense that it's  given Chinese women in their mid-20s  

crippling anxiety about their futures.

But it's clear that this type of campaign will  continue. There have been recent proposals  

that “The government should create a 'good  matchmaking environment and encourage women aged  

between 21 and 29 to give birth during  this optimal reproductive period.'”

Are we sure that these guys should be  creating a good matchmaking environment?

What are they going to do, make  a communist version of Tinder?

But don't worry, because it's not just about  matchmaking. It's also about getting married  

younger. There have been proposals that the  government should lower the marriage age to 18.

But what happens if propaganda  and social pressure,  

not to mention the matchmaking prowess  of the Politburo, still isn't enough?

Remember what I said earlier about  how the one-child policy created  

a massive family planning bureaucracy in China?

Well some experts “fear that officials will  reorient the gigantic family-planning bureaucracy,  

which enforced restrictions through forced  abortions, sterilizations and steep fines,  

toward pushing women to have children.”

Hey, the Chinese Communist Party loves  quotas. The two-child policy could turn  

into a requirement instead of  a restriction. Problem solved.

I'm not saying this is going to happen  immediately. But if other policies  

don't “persuade” people to have enough  children, this will happen eventually.

And that's because this is how the  Chinese Communist Party functions.  

They govern through mass political campaigns that  depend on local officials filling their quotas.

And they already have the  family planning system in place.  

Instead of monitoring employees' menstrual cycles  to make sure they don't get pregnant, state-owned  

companies could monitor employees' menstrual  cycles to make sure they do get pregnant.

Instead of fining people  who have too many children,  

local governments could fine people  who don't have enough children.

Instead of forced abortions, the  Communist Party could limit birth control.  

Actually, they already did that once, under Mao.

Which led to a population explosion,  which led to the one-child policy,  

which led to the population decline, which...hmmm.  

It's almost like giant authoritarian  social engineering policies don't work.

But I wouldn't want you to think that everyone  would be forced to have more kids under the  

Chinese Communist Party's pro-natal policy.  Ethnic minorities will still get sterilized.

And now it's time for me to  answer a question from a fan  

who supports China Uncensored on  the crowdfunding website Patreon.

Rswaggs asks: 

Why doesn't China invest into fish farms?  They must be cheaper than artificial islands.

This was a question from our episode on how  China's fishing fleets are wrecking the oceans.

Well, Rswaggs, China does invest in fish farms.

In fact, they have massive floating fish farms  

that provide two-thirds of  the world's farmed fish.

If you eat tilapia, it's probably from China.

The bad news is, that China has had food  safety issues with their fish farms.  

Farmers tried to deal with polluted water by  feeding fish pesticides and antibiotics that  

are illegal to use in other countries like the US.  Which led to import bans on Chinese farmed fish.

In recent years, Chinese fish farmers  have tried to clean up their practices.

But even in China, consumers who have enough  money prefer wild-caught fish from North America,  

Australia, and other places that  they think of as having clean water.

Meanwhile, I've stopped eating tilapia.

Thanks for your question, Rswaggs.

And a big thank you to everyone who  supports China Uncensored on Patreon.

Visit Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored,  pledge a dollar or more per episode,  

and you'll also get to ask  me questions on the show.

Once again I'm Chris Chappell.  Thanks for watching China Uncensored.