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Singapore’s demographic lesson for China
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When Lee Kuan Yew was still alive and ruling his city-state with an iron fist, the late statesman was not shy about courting controversy. One of his most amusing beliefs was in eugenics, a much-tainted ideology associated with racism. He strongly believed in the idea that intelligence is inherited and loved the book The Bell Curve.
In his 1983 National Day Speech, he made a highly controversial remark about the stupidity of graduate men who wanted to marry women with less education. His speech sparked the so-called Great Marriage debate and his ruling party’s poll dropped 12 per cent in the next election.
Lee’s belief had coloured Singapore’s population policy for years. His government introduced the “stop at two” policy in the 1960s to curb the country’s booming population growth. Singapore’s fertility rate dropped from three in 1970 to 1.61 in 1985, below the replacement level.
Lee was alarmed at the rapidly declining fertility rate -- especially at a time when the country was getting ever more prosperous. He reversed the government’s population policy and started to encourage women to bear more children. He was also forced to drop a contentious policy that favoured university graduate mothers.
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Though the complete reversal in policy led to a temporary surge in births, the fertility rate increased to 1.92 in 1988. However, the fertility rate has declined steadily since then; and is now hovering at around 1.1 and 1.3. The city-state has to rely on immigration to power its economy.
The Singaporean experience is a stark warning for China’s misguided population policy. Singapore’s population control policy lasted less than two decades while China’s draconian one child policy has been in place for 44 years. It is much easier for Singapore, a small city-state to reverse its course than for China, a nation of 1.3 billion.
Despite Singapore’s complete policy U-turn on population control and the introduction of a host of generous incentives to encourage women to have more babies, the country is in the midst of a demographic crisis.
According to the country’s Population White Paper, it needs to take in between 15,000 and 25,000 new citizens every year plus another 30,000 new permanent residents to keep the population from shrinking. This policy is possible given Singapore’s size. No conceivable migration program can help China reverse its looming population crisis.
China has one of worst fertility rates amongst emerging economies. At 1.4 babies per every women of child-bearing age, China will have the world’s largest pensioner population and lesser and lesser productive workers to support them.
Modelling shows that if the current birth trend continues. China’s population could shrink by as much as 29 per cent between 2030 and 2070 and the number of women of child-bearing age could be halved. If this prediction is accurate, China will have a demographic crisis worse than Russia, which is a basket case of declining demographic misfortune.
There is a real possibility that China will become old before it becomes a rich country. And yet, despite the looming demographic crisis, the country’s powerful vested interests are still debating whether it should completely abolish the one child policy. At the moment, adults who were once single children themselves are allowed to have a second child.
But guess what? China’s young people are reluctant to take up the new change in policy. The inertia has proven to be quite hard. One of China’s leading business people and population economist Liang Jianzhang has been waging a war of opinion against Beijing’s misguided policy.
Dr Liang is saying it is already too late for Beijing to change its policy. “Despite strong incentives from the Singaporean government to encourage more child births, its fertility rate stays flat. It is hard to imagine what kind of policy the Chinese government needs to introduce to encourage people to have more kids.”
“It is my prediction that China will need a much more generous incentive scheme than Singapore to encourage people to have more kids to stop the population decline, let alone increase the fertility rate,” he writes in an opinion piece on Caixin.
Chinese leaders have publicly professed their admiration for Lee and the Singaporean model he championed. They should now have the political courage to admit that they have completely botched the country’s population policy. The early success of the one child policy might have helped to address the problem of employment but its continuation despite a dramatic decline in fertility rates is suicidal.
By 2040, the world’s second largest population after India will be 400 million Chinese pensioners. Now that’s a scary thought. Beijing needs to address this problem right here and right now before it goes down the path of Japan. And no immigration program will ever be large enough to solve China’s problem, it has to take this problem on its own.
Singapore’s demographic lesson for China | Business Spectator
Click here to subscribe to the China Spectator daily newsletter.
When Lee Kuan Yew was still alive and ruling his city-state with an iron fist, the late statesman was not shy about courting controversy. One of his most amusing beliefs was in eugenics, a much-tainted ideology associated with racism. He strongly believed in the idea that intelligence is inherited and loved the book The Bell Curve.
In his 1983 National Day Speech, he made a highly controversial remark about the stupidity of graduate men who wanted to marry women with less education. His speech sparked the so-called Great Marriage debate and his ruling party’s poll dropped 12 per cent in the next election.
Lee’s belief had coloured Singapore’s population policy for years. His government introduced the “stop at two” policy in the 1960s to curb the country’s booming population growth. Singapore’s fertility rate dropped from three in 1970 to 1.61 in 1985, below the replacement level.
Lee was alarmed at the rapidly declining fertility rate -- especially at a time when the country was getting ever more prosperous. He reversed the government’s population policy and started to encourage women to bear more children. He was also forced to drop a contentious policy that favoured university graduate mothers.
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Though the complete reversal in policy led to a temporary surge in births, the fertility rate increased to 1.92 in 1988. However, the fertility rate has declined steadily since then; and is now hovering at around 1.1 and 1.3. The city-state has to rely on immigration to power its economy.
The Singaporean experience is a stark warning for China’s misguided population policy. Singapore’s population control policy lasted less than two decades while China’s draconian one child policy has been in place for 44 years. It is much easier for Singapore, a small city-state to reverse its course than for China, a nation of 1.3 billion.
Despite Singapore’s complete policy U-turn on population control and the introduction of a host of generous incentives to encourage women to have more babies, the country is in the midst of a demographic crisis.
According to the country’s Population White Paper, it needs to take in between 15,000 and 25,000 new citizens every year plus another 30,000 new permanent residents to keep the population from shrinking. This policy is possible given Singapore’s size. No conceivable migration program can help China reverse its looming population crisis.
China has one of worst fertility rates amongst emerging economies. At 1.4 babies per every women of child-bearing age, China will have the world’s largest pensioner population and lesser and lesser productive workers to support them.
Modelling shows that if the current birth trend continues. China’s population could shrink by as much as 29 per cent between 2030 and 2070 and the number of women of child-bearing age could be halved. If this prediction is accurate, China will have a demographic crisis worse than Russia, which is a basket case of declining demographic misfortune.
There is a real possibility that China will become old before it becomes a rich country. And yet, despite the looming demographic crisis, the country’s powerful vested interests are still debating whether it should completely abolish the one child policy. At the moment, adults who were once single children themselves are allowed to have a second child.
But guess what? China’s young people are reluctant to take up the new change in policy. The inertia has proven to be quite hard. One of China’s leading business people and population economist Liang Jianzhang has been waging a war of opinion against Beijing’s misguided policy.
Dr Liang is saying it is already too late for Beijing to change its policy. “Despite strong incentives from the Singaporean government to encourage more child births, its fertility rate stays flat. It is hard to imagine what kind of policy the Chinese government needs to introduce to encourage people to have more kids.”
“It is my prediction that China will need a much more generous incentive scheme than Singapore to encourage people to have more kids to stop the population decline, let alone increase the fertility rate,” he writes in an opinion piece on Caixin.
Chinese leaders have publicly professed their admiration for Lee and the Singaporean model he championed. They should now have the political courage to admit that they have completely botched the country’s population policy. The early success of the one child policy might have helped to address the problem of employment but its continuation despite a dramatic decline in fertility rates is suicidal.
By 2040, the world’s second largest population after India will be 400 million Chinese pensioners. Now that’s a scary thought. Beijing needs to address this problem right here and right now before it goes down the path of Japan. And no immigration program will ever be large enough to solve China’s problem, it has to take this problem on its own.
Singapore’s demographic lesson for China | Business Spectator
