Time.news – One million yuan (128 thousand euros) per family for each new born. This is the proposal of a university professor, Liang Jianzhang, professor of the School of Economics of the prestigious Peking University to combat the birth rate in the most populous country on earth, who yesterday certified a decrease in births in 2020, for the fourth consecutive year, in seventh national census.
According to calculations by economist and co-founder of China’s largest travel service provider, Trip.com, bring China’s fertility rate back from the current 1.3 to a level of 2.1 needed to support population growth , would cost China 10% of gross domestic product, which in 2020 broke through 100 trillion yuan (over 15,408 billion dollars) for the first time.
The government should allocate one million yuan for each new born in the form of tax relief, housing subsidies, or directly in cash.. Allocating a lower figure to families, in his opinion, would not encourage couples to have a second child.
The goal would be to have ten million more new borns every year, and China would return the expense with the contribution that, as an adult, the new born will make to the economy. The proposal has caused users of Weibo, the most popular social network in China, to discuss, divided between supporters and others more skeptical, who are wondering if a contribution of one million yuan will be enough to raise a child in today’s China, where the cost of living is steadily rising.
China has to deal with the decrease in the working-age population and the simultaneous enlargement of the over 60 range, which for the first time exceeded the number of young people under the age of 14. The peak of the population could arrive in the next few years: according to another professor of Sociology at Peking University, Lu Jiehua, quoted by the tabloid Global Times, it could occur in 2027, but other forecasts anticipate it as early as next year, with the risk of pressure on the social security, pension and health system of the second largest economy on the planet.
On the political level, many demographers say they are certain, after the census data, that China, after the elimination of the one-child law in 2015, will also decide to eliminate the family planning policy to counteract the decline in births, perhaps already in October of this year, on the occasion of the sixth plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The slowdown in births raises fears that China may soon drop below ten million new births every year, to the lowest ever. Twelve million babies were born in China in 2020 – a new low since 1961, when the country struggled with famines caused by the Great Leap Forward – down 22% from 14.65 million new births recorded in 2019 .
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