Impact of China’s three-child policy on demography, migration and economy

Reaction to this move from the people is mixed. In a poll on Xinhua's Weibo account asking #AreYouReady for the three-child policy, about 29,000 of 31,000 respondents said they would “never think of it” while the remainder chose among the options: "I'm ready and very eager to do so", "it's on my agenda", or “I'm hesitating and there's lot to consider”. (Image: Reuters)

Population planning is integral to a nation’s economy. However advanced a country may be in terms of infrastructural development, the lack of people to labour and produce material growth, can be the nation’s undoing. The People’s Republic of China’s recent change in population policy is in consonance with its worry about future national demography. Peel a layer off, and it is a decision that comes out of the worry about its future economy.

The decision to allow a family to have three children comes at a time when the world population growth has slowed to a point where the global total fertility rate is averaging at 2.5 children per woman. According to the latest census report, China’s fertility rate has dropped to 1.3 children per woman. The actual demographic shifts will take time to emerge, but what is obvious is that this fertility rate will definitely change.

China’s pro-natalist policies have accrued over the last few years. It had softened its stance on its one-child policy in 2016. For many China scholars, the change was heralded as a step towards giving citizens more control over their reproductive choices. However, families were not invested in increasing their sizes, mostly due to intergenerational poverty and lack of access to better opportunities for the next generation. This hesitance to have larger families possibly hints at structural issues of wealth imbalance and inequity within different population clusters.

More important is the question of population density. How the State goes about encouraging couples to have more children will tell us what kind of populations is the State willing to encourage. The decision to get rid of its one-child policy — implemented since 1980 — has to give way to a new kind of State dynamic.

If the new generation of young couples are to have more than one child, how are they going to ensure material prosperity for themselves and their children? While answering such questions, China will also showcase which sectors and classes of families are assumed audiences of the new policy.

In the coming few decades, if the policy is tilted towards Han middle class families in urban China, the result could deplete its rural population. If the change in policy means benefits and incentives for rural China to have more children, the texture of its urban centres will transform. We have to bear in mind that the Chinese State has already been accused of forcing demographic changes on Uighur Muslims and Tibetans. Such demographic changes will necessitate changes in the large-scale economic patterns of the country.

China is the fourth-largest country in the world. Consequently, the country’s largely ageing population is spread over large swathes of agrarian land. Discussions on the latest census report show that the population is unevenly distributed and is densest around urban centres. There are systemic issues surrounding migration and the flow of labouring populations across the country. For the Chinese State, internal migration is unable to offset the problems of under replacement-level fertility. In this scenario, nations usually turn to transnational migrant workers.

What is noteworthy about the latest decision to encourage large families is that the Chinese State is ambitiously looking to solve the problem without opening its borders. The State wants to work within a closed system steered by domestic population clusters.

In terms of populations reaching replacement-level fertility, many states in India will have to acknowledge that they face the quandary China faces today. Kerala, for instance, has already reached a stage where the population is increasing with under-replacement-level fertility. The state government has gone in the direction opposite to the Chinese government. It has encouraged migrants from other states to work within its borders. It is pertinent to state that such comparisons would only be possible if India invests in researching Chinese societal transformation in a way that is not limited to disputes at the borders.

China’s decision will have global implications. It could mean a change in the downward trajectory of the rate at which global population (already over 7 billion) is growing. China’s population continues to be the largest in the world. Its three-child shift means global advocates of family planning and contraceptive use have to rethink the way they will approach China.

Global migration will be one of the main ways governments respond to China’s demographic shift. The immediate question is whether China’s decision will be acclaimed or denounced by other countries. They will probably do neither, and simply watch how the demographic shifts pan out in the coming decades.