China is in the midst of a quiet but stunning nationwide collapse of birthrates. This is the deeper, still largely overlooked, significance of the country\u2019s 2022 population decline, announced by Chinese authorities last month.<\/p>\n
As recently as 2019, demographers at the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations were not expecting China\u2019s population to start dropping until the early 2030s. But they did not anticipate today\u2019s wholesale plunge in childbearing.<\/p>\n
Considerable attention has been devoted to likely consequences of China\u2019s coming depopulation: economic, political, strategic. But the causes of last year\u2019s population drop deserve much closer examination.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s nosedive in childbearing is a silent alarm. It signals deep disaffection with the bleak future the regime is engineering for its subjects. In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in President Xi Jinping\u2019s rule.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n "China\u2019s nosedive in childbearing is a silent alarm. It signals deep disaffection with the bleak future the regime is engineering (…). In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in (Xi\u2019s) rule."https:\/\/t.co\/Yx3m7HXGeA<\/a><\/p>\n — Chris Alexander 🌻 (@calxandr) March 1, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n