What does china has an ageing population?

China, the second larges country in the world, is facing a serious problem — ageing population. Before 1979, when Mao was the chairman of China, he persuaded women to have lots of babies in order to finish his plan – the Great Leap Forward. This is the start of the ageing population in China.

In January 1958, Mao launched the second five year plan known as the Great Leap Forward. 1Mao wanted China to become a world power. He wanted to catch up with the west by ending Chinese dependence upon agriculture. His aim was to catch up with UK in the industry products in ten years time and with America in 15 years time. In order to do this, he will need lots of peasants but many of them die during this progress. This is why Mao encouraged women to have lots of children. In the DTM, the birth rate at stage 2 and 3 are both very high and this is due to requirement of Mao. China’s population base increased “only” by another 100,000,000 on top of its 432,000,000 base.2 The magnitude of China total population increase so much that even the People’s Republic of China found it hard to support.

This is when One Child Policy (ICP) came in to control the over growing population. ICP is the birth control policy of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)3. When Deng Xiao Ping took over the power at 1978, he realized the overpopulation is a roadblock to economic development and also the death rate will increase due to the lack of food and water, then he came out with the ICP idea. In general, this policy is very successful because the birth rate has been reduced gradually starting at the middle of stage 3 in the DTM. The 1982 fertility survey shows the total fertility rate falling from around 6.0in the mid-1950s to well below 4.0in 19614. However, ICP leads to some other problem such as the ageing population.

Since the ICP is introduced, the population has successfully decreased. However, the infant mortality increases at the same time. This is because as a Chinese tradition, the boys carry the family name but now, the families are only allow to have one child therefore the chance of having a boy is less then before. Because of this, some families may choose to kill the baby if it’s a girl in order to carry the family name. This is not the only effect of ICP, since most families choose to have a boy rather than a girl, there will be more males than female in the future. The difference will also increase as the time pass by.

As years go by, the medical care develops a lot in China therefore the life expectancy increase at the same time. Since the birth rate was so high is 1960s but then decrease so much when ICP is introduced, there are depend people then independent people. This slows down the economic development of China. When there are more dependent then the government will need to pay more than it earns. Since the dependent people can not earn their own living, the government will have to give them money and because the numbers of dependent people are so many, the money that was given to the dependents is more than the money China earns.

The birth rate keeps dropping in China is due to one other main reason – as most of the people are now educated, they understand that if you want to raise up your children as best as you can, one child is more than enough. Also, the cost of having two children is normally too expensive for lower or middle classes. The time that is taken to look after them is too much if both parents are working. These are the main reasons why most of the parents choose not to have more than one child.

In conclusion, China has an ageing population a problem is because the birth rate was really high when Mao was the chairman but then it decreases so much that ICP was introduced. The differences between that get worse and develop as the ageing population. Because of this problem, the economic developments is held back since the input and output is not balance due to part of the income is given to those dependent people. The death rate will increase dramatically when the dependent people die. This will affects reputation of China too.