Pak Sahafat – An official of China’s health department asked the governorates of his country to take bold measures to reduce the cost of having children and raising children, to reduce the burden of living expenses on households and increase the rate of childbearing.
According to Pak Sahafat News Agency’s report from Reuters news agency; Yang Wenzhuang, director of the Department of Population and Family Development under the National Health Commission of China (NHC), emphasized the importance of supporting families to improve the fertility rate in the latest issue of Population and Health Magazine published under the supervision of this institution.
Data released last month (January 2023) show that China’s population declined last year (2022) for the first time in 60 years, which is a historic and unprecedented turn that is expected to mark the beginning of the long-term period is declining.
Referring to women’s concerns about money and career advancement, Yang added that strict policies are needed to improve the fertility level. Governorships should be asked to proactively pursue bold innovations and implement them to reduce the cost of childbirth, child care and children’s education to improve the long-term balanced development of the population.
He added: China should seriously take advantage of the important period of the population increase window in the 14th five-year plan, which will continue until 2025, to accelerate the promotion of childbearing support.
Since tens of years ago, China has been concerned about the prospect of unbridled population growth, from 1980 to 2015, the stubborn policy of one child per family to curb the increase in the number of citizens; but now the population of China is decreasing and India is becoming the most populous country in the world.
According to the data published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the population of one billion and 411 million people in China will decrease by nearly 850,000 people in 2022, which is the first decrease since 1961, which is the last year of the Great Famine period in this country. Last year, China’s birth rate was only 6.77 for every 1,000 citizens, which decreased compared to the birth rate of 7.52% in 2021, and it was the lowest birth rate since the registration of population statistics in this country.
Much of this downward trend in China’s population map is the result of the implementation of the one-child policy and the high cost of education, which prevents many people from having more than one child, or even one child.
According to United Nations experts, China’s population will decrease by 109 million tons by 2050, which is a threefold increase compared to their previous forecast in 2019.
Some Chinese provinces, such as Shaanxi, have recently announced that they will pay sperm donors up to $735 to strengthen sperm banks.