For two years in a row China’s enormous population has been shrinking. As the country grapples with a declining birth rate, an ageing population, and a slowing economy, the government is urging families to have more children. But for China’s women, it's not an easy decision.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 For Li Man Zhao, travel and running her bicycle business was more appealing than having a
00:07 family.
00:08 I also have quite a few female friends who were single mothers and raised the kids after
00:14 themselves and I also saw the difficulties that they experienced.
00:20 Now Chinese authorities are going to great lengths to encourage women to have children,
00:25 but Li Man's not convinced.
00:27 It's still a personal choice. So for most women, I think if government doesn't say you
00:34 need to have more children, if they want to have more children, they will have more children.
00:39 The one-child policy was introduced in 1980 to slow population growth. It was lifted in
00:46 2015 but started a trend the government is struggling to reverse.
00:51 In 2019 the number of newborns in China was 14 million. Last year it was just 9 million.
00:58 The economy has had a big impact and the cost of raising children has increased significantly.
01:04 President Xi Jinping says it's now critical to foster a new type of marriage and childbirth
01:10 culture.
01:11 Individual provinces and even companies are trying to come up with ways to encourage people
01:16 to have more kids. Everything from cash subsidies for having a second and third child to paying
01:22 for fertility treatments like IVF.
01:26 But challenges finding work, high childcare costs and a generation of only children feeling
01:31 the pressure of looking after ageing parents mean it's becoming more common to have no
01:36 kids at all. For some, the incentives might work.
01:41 I would like to have a second child and if possible we would even like to have a third
01:46 child.
01:46 But sometimes love isn't enough for parents to take the leap. The shadow of the one-child
01:52 policy is hard to shake.
01:54 - I'm just a child.
01:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]