Opinion

Preparing for aging nation

By Hu Angang (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-23 13:01

National census shows China needs to adjust its social and economic policies to address changes in society

The results of China's sixth national population census show that the total population in the Chinese mainland was about 1.34 billion by the end of 2010. This, together with other indicators drawn from the census, should serve as important references for making future population policies and relevant social and economic policies.

One such indicator is the education level, which, according to the census, has remarkably improved in the Chinese mainland since 2000. For instance, the number of people with a university education has increased from 3,611 people out of every 100,000 to 8,930, indicating an annual average growth far exceeding the annual average population growth of 0.57 percent over the past decade.

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Such a jump reflects the improvement of human resources as a result of modernization. China nowadays sees the increasingly geographical concentration of human capital, particularly in cosmopolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Also telling is the fact that China is going through an unprecedented process of family nucleation. The average size of a family household in the Chinese mainland has declined to 3.10 persons by 2010, compared with 3.44 persons in the 2000 census. In contrast, the number of family households has risen from around 368 million to about 402 million in the same period.

This rapid growth of family households has spurred the country's housing demand. Statistics show that the area of residential buildings sold last year exceeded 1 billion square meters, three times that of the peak in the US and 10 times that of Japan.

The results of the census also show that more than 261.39 million people live in places other than those of their household registration, an increase of about 117 million on the 2000 data, indicating a growth of 81.03 percent.

Today Chinese society is not simply a dual urban-rural structure, it is a more complicated structure comprised of a formal and informal economy in cities/towns, and a traditional agricultural and non-agricultural economy in the rural areas. The development of this structure will bring internal integration of the urban system, internal integration of the rural system and urban-rural integration.

The census also shows that the process of urbanization is also driving a geographical redistribution of population.

Over the past decade, people have continuously flooded into the well-developed coastal areas from populous and poverty-stricken regions. As a result, the population of some provinces such as those located in the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas has swelled dramatically.

All the above deserve the government's attention and should be taken into account in future policymaking.

But more importantly, the 2010 census has confirmed a grave challenge the country is facing - an aging China has fewer children to care for it. By 2010, young people aged 14 or below accounted for only 16.6 percent of the total population, significantly down from the 2000 figure of 22.89 percent. However, there were 177.65 million people in the age group of 60 or above, accounting for 13.26 percent of the total, and this number is expected to rise to 200 million before 2015.

To address this challenge, China should appropriately adjust its decades-long family-planning policy, in a bid to avoid a demographic imbalance and the accompanying social burden on future generations.

A demographic bonus was one of the engines for the country's rapid economic growth over the past three decades. However, with such an advantage fading and a "population deficit" arising, the government should take action and adjust the family-planning policy as a top priority.

By adhering to the family-planning policy, China has managed to curb population growth and improve the health and education standards of its people and the world has also benefited from China's policy. However, we should carefully study and analyze the changes in major indicators reflected by this new census, and make due adjustments so that the policy can better accommodate the new situation.

In fact, when China launched the family-planning policy nationwide in 1980, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China addressed a letter to all Party members and all members of the Communist Youth League advocating every couple to have just one child, but added that: "30 years later, the population growth will slow down and by that time, the country can adopt a different population policy".

The statistics from the sixth national population census indicate now is the time.

The author is professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University and the director of the Center for China Study, a leading policy think-tank. The article first appeared in China Business News.