China has always maintained the number one position in terms of population, but this situation took a turn in 2022.
Data shows that in 2022, China experienced negative population growth for the first time in 61 years, and the total population size decreased by 850,000 compared with the previous year.
In other words, since the full release of the second child in 2016, the population trend is still showing a downward trend. So the question is, is depopulation good or bad for us? If you don't give birth to me, I won't give birth, the population will be halved to 700 million, will life be better in 30 years?
.03
With the population falling off a cliff, will life be better?
First, let's take a look at the benefits of depopulation:
Human activities inevitably have an impact on environmental pollution, and once the population declines, the burden on nature is correspondingly reduced. In this regard, it can be seen that during the shutdown of the epidemic, human beings reduced their outdoor activities, and the environmental pollution reached the lowest level in recent years.
In addition, a declining population will allow everyone to allocate more natural resources, including employment, which will make it easier for everyone to find work, have more employment opportunities, and greatly improve wages and benefits.
Further, negative population growth will also reduce the crime rate in society and improve social harmony.
Secondly, there are many disadvantages of population decline
There are pros and cons to everything, and population decline is no exception, and even the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
(1) Population aging
There are more and more elderly people, and the growth rate of newborns is far less than the rate of aging, there are no "back-up" children, but there are elderly people who are getting old all the time. This situation presents different problems for people of all ages:
First of all, the youngest children, the reduction of newborns will make the test selection mechanism more cruel, for example, the original 60 points to pass, the later may become 80 points to pass.
The second is the youth in the middle, the population has plummeted, and there will be a large number of job vacancies in society, although there are more high-paying job opportunities, but cheap jobs will also be eliminated. But often these eliminated jobs produce cheaper goods.
So in the end, although the income level of migrant workers has increased, the price of goods consumed has also increased, even far exceeding the level of income increase.
(2) It is very detrimental to China's overall development
If you want to have high-end technology, you need talent. However, once the population decreases, it will be difficult to recruit enough talent, which will affect the development of the mainland, and may even cause our country to gradually fall behind.
(3) The decline in consumption level affects the economy
When the population decreases, the demand for consumption decreases, and without more people to drive consumption, it will be difficult for the country's economy to move forward.
(4) Influence resource development. The development of scarce resources requires labor, and without labor, the progress of development will be greatly reduced, and if we rely too much on imported foreign resources, we will be constrained by others.
(5) All walks of life will be affected. If the population is greatly reduced and the market is oversupplied, people will gather in more prosperous areas, and then there will be a large number of houses and land left in those remote and economically underdeveloped places, and the real estate in developed areas will be more and more in short supply, forming an extreme situation.
.02
Would people's lives be better if the population were halved?
1. The roads will become smoother. The probability of car accidents, running red lights, and traffic jams will also be greatly reduced, and there will be no "morning rush hour" and "evening rush hour" that everyone is worried about every day.
2. No more queuing for eating, drinking and merrymaking on holidays. Travel on holidays, no longer crowded, no longer queue up in various scenic spots, eat, drink and have fun.
3. The sky is bluer. Once the population is drastically reduced, the large number of car exhaust, industrial emissions, and littering caused by the large population in the past will be greatly reduced, the sky will be bluer, and the air will become cleaner.
4. It's easier to find a job. With a declining population, it is more difficult for companies to recruit workers, and with a large number of job vacancies, it is easier for workers to find jobs.
5. Everyone has bought the house. When there are fewer people, there will not be so much demand for housing, and under the oversupply of the market, housing prices will fall, and at that time, the house will no longer be a burden for us, and everyone can buy a house...
However, as the good things come along, the drawbacks soon follow.
(1) Prices are more expensive
The population will decline sharply, there will be a serious shortage of labor, labor costs will increase significantly, and eventually will be passed on to the end market, and finally the cost of goods will increase sharply, prices will rise, if the income can not keep up with the increase at this time, people's living pressure will gradually increase.
(2) Aging is intensifying
If the population continues to decline and the aging population continues to increase, social security expenditures such as pension and medical care will increase significantly, bringing a heavy burden to the local economy.
At that time, measures will have to be taken to alleviate this problem, such as delaying retirement, which has been discussed in the past, in order to extend people's working life and reduce the burden of an aging population. This means that in the future, each of us may become an "elderly" practitioner.
(3) The supply of talents is not enough, and innovation is backward
If the population is declining sharply, there will be no supply of qualified personnel, and it will not be possible to train a sufficient number of high-tech talents, which will be very limited to the development of science and technology and innovation, and will even lead to our innovation in science and technology and other fields completely lagging behind the developed countries.
(4) Restricted national development
As the population decreases, the level of consumption will also decline, because the population decline means less purchasing power, which will not be able to effectively stimulate the development of the economy, and various economic indicators may be limited, which will have a certain impact on economic development.
Moreover, the decline in consumer demand due to a depopulation will also lead to a reduction in various taxes and fees, which will limit any activities of the state.
(5) Influence international status
The most serious thing is that the decline in population will cause the number of the country's military forces to not keep up with the demand, and there may even be a serious loss of military defense forces, resulting in an unprecedented blow to the mainland in improving its own hard power.
The combination of these aspects will undermine China's strength, and even affect China's status and voice in the international community.
It can be seen that the sharp decline in population does not mean that Baili is harmless, or even that it brings more harm, and the chain reaction triggered by its disadvantages will affect many aspects.
Today, the mainland's birth data has hit three "new lows": the number of births is 9.02 million, a new low since the founding of China; the birth rate was 6.39 per thousand, the lowest on record; The total fertility rate fell below 1.05, making it one of the lowest in the world.
This means that we can no longer maintain a normal population replacement, and in this case, how to curb the expansion of the problem will ultimately depend on what kind of policies the state will promote.