The Chinese birth rate fell last year, two years after the country withdrew its long-standing one-child policy and allowed Chinese couples to have up to two children.
Birth rates rose by 8 percent to 17.9 million children born in 2016. The increase seemed to indicate the success of the new policy: Half of the babies in 2016 were born to couples who already had one child. But the rate dropped in 2017 to 17.2 million births, according to a Chinese National Bureau of Statistics report released last Thursday.
The drop alarms Chinese authorities who are on a mission to increase the size of the country’s younger population to support its fast-growing number of elderly people. With almost 1.4 billion people, China has the world’s largest population but skews elderly, with more aging parents than children to care for them.
And it looks as if a two-child policy is not doing the trick.
One expert is not surprised. Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and author of Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream Is the New Threat to World Order, testified before the Congressional-Executive Committee on China in 2015 that he didn’t expect the two-child amnesty to make a difference in the Chinese birth rate.
“Forty years of anti-natal, anti-child propaganda has left its mark on the Chinese psyche,” said Mosher. “Few Chinese young people, who are themselves only…
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