China's vast population is aging rapidly, according to the latest census figures released on Thursday, a demographic trend that threatens to sap the country's economic vitality, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Some Chinese demographers have seized on the numbers to argue that the government should abandon its one-child policy, put in place in 1980 to deal with a population explosion encouraged by Chairman Mao Zedong.
But China's top leaders have declared that they are not prepared to dismantle a policy that has drawn widespread criticism for using forced abortions, sterilizations and other coercive practices. President Hu Jintao on Tuesday told the Communist Party's Central Committee that China will "stick to and improve its current family planning policy and maintain a low birth rate," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, which surveyed 400 million rural and urban households from November last year, China's population has risen to 1.339 billion from 1.265 billion in 2000, when the last census was carried out. That reflects average annual growth of 0.57% from 2000 to 2010, down from 1.07% in 1990-2000.
The new population figure reflects a growth rate of 5.84% over the decade. That compares with a growth rate of 11.66% over the previous decade.
People over the age of 60 now account for 13.3% of China's population, compared to 10.33% in 2000. Those over the age of 65 account for nearly 8.9% compared with 7.1% a decade ago.
The reserve of future workers is also dwindling. Those under the age of 14 now make up 16.6% of the population from 23% 10 years ago.
China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, which oversees the widely reviled one-child policy, says the policy has prevented 400 million births. The government credits it with helping to lift the country out of poverty and underpinning three decades of rapid growth.
But Wang Feng, a population expert and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, said on Thursday that economic growth is now imperiled. Slowing population growth rates endangers the country's massive pool of labor, which has been the country's economic engine.
"For the national fertility level to be so low, and for so long, is a wake-up call for policymakers that there will be consequences," said Mr. Wang, a member of a group of elite demographers, academics and former officials who have been calling for the one-child policy to be replaced with a two-child policy – and even incentives to have children.
Members of the group say that the Chinese labor force is due to start shrinking from 2016. That would throw into reverse a demographic trend that fed China's manufacturing boom and put upward pressure on wages, which is likely to result in higher rates of inflation. The number of workers aged 20-24 is already shrinking.
Family planners have justified the one-child policy in previous years by stating that the country's fertility rate -- the average number of children born to each woman -- is 1.8, said Professor Cai Yong, an expert in China's demography at the University of North Carolina.
However, the real number, according to calculations from the census data, is significantly lower than the 1.8 level, said Mr. Cai. That would put the fertility rate dangerously below the "replacement rate" of 2.1. Read more. (Subscription required.)
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