 Number
of newborns in China drops 15% in 2020 as coronavirus weighs
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[February 09, 2021]
BEIJING (Reuters) - The number of newborns
in China plummeted 15% in 2020 from a year earlier, according to the
Ministry of Public Security, with the onset of the novel coronavirus
disrupting the economy and weighing on decisions to have a family.
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 China saw 10.035 million births last year, the ministry said on
Monday, compared with 11.79 million in 2019. Of those born last
year, 52.7% were boys and 47.3% girls.
Posts on Chinese social media with the hashtag "How to get China out
of a low fertility trap" were viewed 120 million times as of
Tuesday, with some comments linking low fertility rates to high
living costs, while others said social norms were changing.
"The declining fertility rate actually reflects the progress in the
thinking of Chinese people - women are no longer a fertility tool,"
wrote a user of Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog popular in China.
In recent years, many Chinese couples have been reluctant to have
children due to the rising cost of health care, education and
housing. China's decision in 2016 to abandon its decades-long
one-child policy has not provided much impetus to the country's
birth rate.
The economic uncertainties brought on by COVID-19 last year have
further weighed on decisions to have children, extending a long-term
birth decline in the world's most populous but fast-ageing nation.
About a fifth of Chinese citizens are aged 60 and above, or around
250 million people.
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 Rapid ageing will create policy
headwinds for Chinese leaders as they promise to
guarantee health care and pension payments,
despite an expected shrinking of the labour
force and challenges to lifting China's slowing
labour productivity.
"Instead of encouraging multiple births, it
would be better to work hard on lifting the
'quality' of the new population," another Weibo
user wrote.
China's National Bureau of Statistics is
expected to release official 2020 population
data in late February.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo in Beijing and Engen Tham
in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Beijing
newsroom; Editing by Michael Perry, Himani
Sarkar and Gareth Jones)
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