\n<\/p>\n
For many decades, the Chinese government attempted to limit population growth through a one-child policy \u2014 only to abolish the rule in 2016 as it realized that the number of annual births had started to plummet at alarming levels.<\/p>\n
The aggressive policy \u2014 alongside other extreme measures \u2014 succeeded far too well, with birth rates dropping a staggering 17 percent between 2024 and 2025 to the lowest level since 1949. The country\u2019s population is now actively shrinking each year, and it\u2019s hard to imagine how the trend could be reversed.<\/p>\n
The situation has gotten so dire that Beijing eliminated tax incentives on condoms, hormonal birth control, and other contraceptives, as Fortune<\/em> reports. Basically, it\u2019s now desperately trying to reverse itself out of a fertility crisis of its own doing. President Xi Jinping has practically been pleading with the country\u2019s women to bear more children.<\/p>\n Yet fewer and fewer women thereare interested in raising a family, sending China well below the \u201creplacement rate\u201d of 2.1 children per woman, meaning the government\u2019s interventions are doing little to address the issue. Many countries around the world, including most of North and South America, and Europe, are already experiencing below-replacement fertility rates. The situation playing out in China is a preview for what\u2019s still to come in many other regions projected to experience a similar decline.<\/p>\n \u201cThe empirical evidence from other countries so far is that monetary incentives have almost no effect in raising fertility,\u201d University of California professor of sociology Wang Feng told the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n Despite its economy growing by five percent last year, over 11 million people died while only 7.92 million babies were born. Meanwhile, a hot new app is trending in China that takes the form of a countdown timer that has to be reset regularly by single people so that their friends and family will know if they die alone.<\/p>\n The number of working-age people is also dropping as the population continues to age, further taxing healthcare systems and pension funds. The major drop in the fertility rate will continue to have devastating effects, shifting demographics that could result in a worsening economic outlook. The cost of raising a child in China is still extremely high compared to other countries.<\/p>\n \u201cWith China\u2019s economic woes, young people may want to wait and see, and that\u2019s not good news for raising fertility,\u201d Wang told the NYT<\/em>.<\/p>\n In short, whether taxes on contraceptives and Xi\u2019s calls for a \u201cnew type of marriage and childbearing culture\u201d will reverse China\u2019s plummeting birthrate remains unclear at best.<\/p>\n The country\u2019s population has been shrinking since 2022, and judging by the latest numbers, the trend is bound to continue. And as the population continues to age, hundreds of millions could soon be leaving the workforce \u2014 a demographic crisis and ticking time bomb in one.<\/p>\n