China, today

In my previous two China-related pieces I have dwelt on past social issues, while giving some hints as to present outcomes, but now I feel it is time to bring you up to date. Matters I have referred to before include population control, now involving some remarkable recent trends in births, marriages and divorces; the relative perceived value of boy children vs girls, and the historic treatment of women. In the comments below I have discussed the fate of the “Sweat Shop” and a quite disgusting allegation of an anti-ageing medicine. Let’s now look at each in turn!

Aftermath of the One Child policy

The Chinese population had tripled from 1949 to 1980, the government became extremely concerned and introduced the One Child policy. It’s worth mentioning that the policy was relaxed for the 55 ethnic minorities (which include the Uyghurs, but let that pass for now). The original aim was not just to stabilise but ultimately reduce the population to 700,000 (about half what it is now). After 35 years the population stabilised, but then the government started to have worries about the age demographic and the burden on the young of the upkeep of the old. A 2007 United Nations report had calculated that in that year there were 9.1 employed people for every Chinese over 65, in 2020 it was 5 to 1, and in 2035 the estimate is 2.4 to 1, by which time it is expected that the numbers of those aged 60 and older will have risen from 280 million to more than 400 million. But China has some of the lowest retirement ages in the world: the government has just announced that they would in stages raise the retirement age for men to 63, and women to 58 (55 for blue collar workers) by 2038, the first changes since 1978. The minimum number of years of contribution to be eligible for pension will go up from 15 to 20.

So the One Child policy was first relaxed in 2016 with families allowed to have two births. But the expected explosion did not happen, there was only a modest increase in 2016, but in every year since there have been fewer births. So the limit was raised to 3 in 2021, with the 2022 total barely more than half the 2016 total being 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths: so China ended that year with 850,000 fewer people, the first fall since 1961 during the Great Famine of the Mao Zedong era. Worse was to follow in 2023, when the total number of people in China dropped by 2.08 million, or 0.15%, to 1.409 billion.

A curious consequence has arisen outside our apartment. Our immediate view from our 8th floor balcony overlooks a slum disused factory complex dating probably from the early years of Reform and Opening, and we were told that it was to be the site of a new school. Unexpectedly earlier this year gangs of workmen occupied the area daily and now it has been tarted up with fresh coats of paint in readiness for re-letting. The school, it seems, will no longer be needed.

What is going on?

Worldwide the tendency in recent years within developed countries has been a falling birthrate, and as I shall show later, China is fast on the road to being a developed country. The reasons parents give for wanting just one (or even none!)  mirror those western nations, South Korea and Japan, essentially a desire for a better standard of living in a time of a rising cost of living. The function of caring for elderly parents and children was strong in the past. Now, society can provide services to look after them in ways that only families could provide before, which makes family formation and child rearing unnecessary for some people. And, amazingly, it is said that China is the second most expensive country in the world to raise a child, after South Korea.

China’s marriage rates have also plunged to record lows. Couples are getting married later, or not at all (and this of course affects the birth rate, late marriage is low or non childbearing). While 47% of newly married couples were 24 or younger in 2005, that number dropped to just 15 percent in 2022, with nearly 50 percent of newlyweds older than 30, compared to less than 20 percent in 2005. In 2023 the country registers 7.68 million newlywed couples, up 845,000 from the previous year in what analysts say is sign of post-pandemic wedding rebound, but perhaps many were merely Covid-delayed. People have also got more choosy, perhaps, making it hard to find the right partner. Apart from paying relatively high betrothal gifts, a large expenditure is required for preparing a wedding banquet, wedding room, gold and silver jewellery and so on. A survey shows that the cost of getting married requires some families to save up for nearly ten years in rural areas, and many families are burdened with heavy debts for adult children’s marriage. Rising youth unemployment is another issue.

Meanwhile divorce rates have skyrocketed in recent decades. The divorce rate’s steep, decades-long climb only stopped in 2021 after the government made it a little harder for couples to separate, imposing a 30 day cooling off period. Apparently a total of 2.59 million couples registered for divorce in 2023, but as with the marriage figures I think it is difficult to interpret trends in recent years owing to the interference from Covid, and we shall have to wait for 2024 figures to see how they have settled down.

In May, a Communist Party-affiliated think tank wrote in a report on China’s crashing birth rate: “The spread of radical feminism has had a negative impact on women’s individual beliefs and desires regarding childbirth.”

The relative perceived value of boy children vs girls

It is a well known fact as I described before that boy children have been more highly regarded than girls, but what is little known is that social changes have now neutralised and even reversed that situation. There was always the custom of the Bride Price, in effect the groom’s family were buying a wife for their son. Typically this might have been about 20,000 RMB ($3,000) when there was not much money around, but as people got richer (see later section on wage rates below) their demands skyrocketed, perhaps even up to 500,000 ($70,000). So girls are more valuable than boys!The government has reacted to put a limit of about 20,000 on the transaction, but money can flow under the table as well as over the top. Then there is the male/female imbalance resulting from One Child years, resulting in a matter of supply and demand. My wife adds that girls may be more obedient and can be expected to look after parents better in their old age.

Female Emancipation

According to the World Economic Forum, China stands at number 106 out of 146 nations in the Global Gender Gap Index 2024 rankings, up one rank, a survey covering Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. Its rankings in each section compared to 2023 are:

Economic Participation and Opportunity 39 (up from 45),  labour-force participation parity stands at 81.5%.

Educational Attainment seems low at 127 (123), but reaches 93.4%, with a literacy rate score of 96.6%, although men’s literacy rate is +3.4 percentage points higher than women’s. At the secondary education level, there is a 12.7% gap to bridge. However, China achieves full parity in tertiary education enrollment,

Health and Survival rank even lower at 145 (145), but nevertheless score 94%. My experience of the Chinese medical system places it far above the UK National Health Service, in fact I would go as far to say that it has saved my life twice in recent years: I intend to write a piece about prostate cancer some time, will enlarge upon it then. I suspect the ranking is penalized as a result of poorer provision in remote rural areas.

Political Empowerment 111 (114). Parity is higher for women in parliament, as they represent one-fourth of parliamentarians in 2024. Women’s representation at the ministerial level has declined to 4.3%, compared to the 11.5% share held from 2010 to 2016 (except for 2014).

If you want to look up your own country you’ll find the report here:

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2024.pdf

In an interesting development, a furore has surrounded the introduction last month by Game Science of a new video game Black Myth: Wukong, based on the Return to the West, one of the four Chinese fiction classics. The launch has been marred by reports of a history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour from employees of the studio including multiple references to genitalia and sexual innuendos, and getting fellatio from all the new employees. A woman developer was disconcerted to receive instructions to the effect that “It needs to give people an urge to masturbate.” In another document she received for feedback, the company that commissioned her concept art blatantly said, “Just imagine that she’s the type you most want to f***.”  It doesn’t help that the company has so far responded to media requests regarding this history with “no comment.”

https://www.scmp.com/abacus/games/article/3102108/sexism-gaming-rife-china-and-more-stark-ever-following-comments-ceo?module=inline&pgtype=article

Sweat shops and the low wage economy

I received a comment to the first piece on China that referred to the Sweat Shops. If you think that China is a low wage economy you are seriously out of date. In the past 20 years wages have increased about eightfold. A Chinese worker who needed nine years to afford a basic EV in 2008 now needs just one.

A Chinese friend up in Longhua, an outer suburb of Shenzhen where rents and wages are cheaper, has to offer 5,000 RMB a month for the most low skill level factory posts, 9/10 thousand is more likely for a skilled operator. The latter is about $1,400 a month. And in PPP terms, real value, the yuan is worth 3.75 to the dollar, so you can practically double those figures and so the sweat shop wage is worth about $1,400 a month. We are looking for a housekeeper and my wife thinks we will need to offer 10,000: nigh on $3.000 in PPP terms.

I searched for a graph covering the past twenty years, I could not find one so we will have to rely on the pair below to span the years.

So: in 2003 the average annual wage was about 14,600 renminbi a year, that’s about $2,000 at today’s rates.

Ten years later, in 2013, it had risen to 52,388, a rise of 358%, that’s $7,400.

And the latest full year, 2023, it was 120,000, (up 821% from 2003), that’s $17,000.

In PPP terms it’s x 7.1/3.75: so the spending power of the average wage is  $32,000, or GBP 24,000.

Low wage, now, not.

Truth or fiction?

A commenter asked about the practice in traditional medicine of making a soup out of boiled aborted foetuses, which apparently had a reputation for certain health promoting properties. Neither my wife nor I had ever heard of the practice but she mentioned the use of placentas, to which I will refer later. A search turns up three particular events which received much publicity.

1. A performance artist filmed eating such an alleged concoction, in 2001.

2. A Hong Kong film, Dumplings, in 2004, which of course was fiction but may have been inspired by the artist.

3. The seizure of a shipment from China in 2012 of thousands of tablets said to have been derived from foetuses, by South Korean customs. No evidence was ever produced and experts were quoted as saying the practice was unknown in China. Zhu Qingwen, a professor of Chinese medicine, said that the material was probably derived from placentas.

A search for such a product on Chinese traditional medicine web sites gives no mention and diverts to the use of placentas.

An undated report in a Hong Kong newspaper Eastweek claimed that their journalists found that Shenzhen hospitals were selling foetuses and taking them home to eat, quoting medics from the Shenzhen Health Centre for Women and Children, the Luo Hu Clinic, and the Sin Hua Clinic. None of these establishments appear to exist. Dr Warren Lee, one time president of the Hong Kong Nutrition Association is quoted as saying in 1995: “Eating foetuses is a traditional Chinese medicine deeply rooted in folklore”. But apparently, as I found elsewhere he had added: “But I don't know if eating foetuses is just folklore or more than that."

On the available evidence I am inclined to dismiss the story. But as evidenced above, the use of placentas, believed by some to be health giving, is well known but was outlawed in 2005: presumably available on the black market, but my wife says that people now make do with pig placentas.

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Over the past 13 years, among the films I have made is a series entitled A Stranger in a Strange Land which now runs to nine episodes, each of about 30 minutes. The first from 2013 below is the introductory: China - Another Planet, which samples Guangdong, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. I was in Sichuan in 2008 not long after the earthquake, I didn’t have a video camera at that time. So just stills.

Let me know if you want more.