China hopes for new births in year of the dragon

The good news, according to Yuan Xin, vice-president of the Population Association of China, is that the reduction in the national headcount this year will be milder due to a cultural preference for having a baby during the Year of the Dragon.

In China, some families prefer to have a baby in the Year of the Dragon as they believe this will make their children become smarter and more successful.

There is numerical evidence for this: an increase in new births in 2012, the last Year of the Dragon.

But the bad news is that, beyond taking advantage of superstition, cunning plans to combat the downward trend are lacking as China is urged by demographic experts to take immediate action to boost its birth rate.

The call comes as figures point to just-ended 2023 as the second year in which China recorded population loss. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday that the country’s population amounted to 1.409 billion at the end of last year, down 2.08 million people (the population of North Macedonia) from a year earlier.

It has been the second year that China recorded a contraction in population after the figure dropped by 850,000 (the population of Comoros) in 2022 from 2021. Last year, India surpassed China to become the world’s largest population. The number of people in India grew 0.81% to 1.429 billion last year from 2022.

“The downward trend in China’s total population is bound to be long-term and become an inherent characteristic,” Yuan of the Population Association said Wednesday.

He said China’s fertility rate, the average number of children born to a woman of childbearing age, is about 1.05% at present, compared with 1.3% in Japan, 1.7% in the United States and 2% in India.

He said the pace of the