China’s population growth is set to turn negative by 2025, as low birthrates and aging will bring long-term challenges, the National Health Commission, said in an article published on Monday.
The growth rate of China’s population has been slowing down in recent years. Official data shows that last year, the total population of China shrank to the lowest amount in about six decades. Local data shows that at least 11 of the 31 provincial-level regions in China had already experienced negative growth in population last year, mostly in the Northeast, Northwest and Central China.
“The fertility level has been falling continuously, dropping to below 1.3 in recent years,” said the article. “A low fertility rate will become the major risk to China’s balanced population development. Meanwhile, the society has been aging fast with people aged 60 and older over 30 percent around 2035,” it said. China’s families have also gotten smaller with 2.62 members per family in 2021, down from 3.1 a decade ago.
A survey led by the commission indicates that in 2021, Chinese women planned to have an average of 1.64 children, compared with 1.76 in 2017 and 1.73 in 2019. Those of the post-1990s and the post-2000 generations, who have the highest fertility potential, said they planned to have fewer children at 1.54 and 1 .48, respectively. “Heavy economic burden, lack of child care and females’ concerns over career development have become the major challenges to fertility,” the article said.
In a push to address the problem, the central government announced last year all couples will be allowed to have up to three children. Several policies were put in place to encourage births. Besides, more affordable nursery care centers will be set up and there are supportive measures from reducing tax for raising children and providing fertility subsidies (补贴) to favorable housing policies introduced by the government. In the future, more efforts will be devoted to creating a fertility friendly society.
【小题1】What does the underlined word “fertility “ in paragraph 4 mean?| A．Thestandard of human health. |
| B．Thebirthrate of a population. |
| C．Thetotal population of a region. |
| D．Thenegative growth in population. |
| A．To highlight that there are an rising number of old people in China. |
| B．To present the positive aspects of the Chinese governmental policies. |
| C．To stress present situation of China’s negative growth in population. |
| D．To indicate it is impossible to change the downtrend of the population. |
| A．They will be burdened with great financial stress. |
| B．They may have no extra energy to care for babies. |
| C．They are anxious about the future of their career. |
| D．They’d rather have more time for entertainment. |
| A．China to see population shrink by 2025 |
| B．Females’ refusal to raising children recently |
| C．Causes behind the small population of China |
| D．A survey on the growth rate of China’s population |
