Trung Quốc khuyến khích phụ nữ sinh con nhưng dân số lại giảm

China’s ruling (cầm quyền) Communist Party (đảng cộng sản) is facing a national emergency. To fix it, the party wants more women to have more babies.

It has offered them sweeteners (điều ngọt ngào), like cheaper housing, tax benefits and cash. It has also invoked (khơi dậy) patriotism (lòng yêu nước), calling on them to be “good wives and mothers.”

The efforts aren’t working. Chinese women have been shunning (tránh) marriage and babies at such a rapid pace (tốc độ nhanh) that China’s population in 2023 shrank (giảm) for the second straight (liên tiếp) year, accelerating (tăng) the government’s sense of crisis (khủng hoảng) over the country’s rapidly aging population and its economic future.

China said on Wednesday that 9.02 million babies were born in 2023, down from 9.56 million in 2022 and the seventh year in a row that the number has fallen. Taken together with the number of people who died during the year — 11.1 million — China has more older people than anywhere else in the world, an amount that is rising rapidly. China’s total population was 1,409,670,000 at the end of 2023, a decline of two million people, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (cục thống kê).

The shrinking (giảm) and aging population worries Beijing because it is draining (cạn kiệt) China of the working-age people it needs to power the economy. The demographic crisis (khủng hoảng nhân khẩu học), which arrived sooner than nearly anyone expected, is already straining (căng thẳng) weak (yếu kém) and underfunded (hiếu vốn) health care and pension (lương hưu) systems.

China hastened (đẩy nhanh) the problem with its one-child policy, which helped to push the birthrate down over several decades. The rule also created generations of young only-child girls who were given an education and employment opportunities — a cohort (nhóm) that turned into empowered (được trao quyền) women who now view Beijing’s efforts as pushing them back into the home.

source: nytimes,