Collapse in births this year(2025), I am really astonished what has happened in 2025, every year I am thinking it won't come much lower but every year it is. I thought this year we will see 8.5m which is really low but we have only 7.92m, last year it was 9.54m. TFR most likely felt below 1.0. We're going South Korea and Taiwan province direction. Now no reason for restraints and conservatives policy. Huge subsidies are needed now no later to try to change anything in birth rate.
No country who is developed and industrialized is not facing this issue. It’s very difficult to see how the CCP can change this, since this requires drastic measures that will impact the whole society and economy as well, so tough decisions. Plus Many others have tried and failed to achieve their desired results. You can’t force people to have kids if they don’t want to or if they regard their career to be more important and life too hectic and busy to be able to raise a family and the culture also sees children as a burden .
The only developed country in the world who has defied the odds is Israel and there’s a reason for that. Having being to Israel I found out that they are rather weird in the fact that even as a wealthy developed well educated country, child birth and children are looked up on as a good thing and family units are more celebrated than childless couples(who are frown upon by the society), so this creates a positive pressure for youths to have children. There is a cultural norm to have kids, as the culture celebrates and encourages parenthood at all levels. So this excellent paternal policies to encourage having kids means people have fewer barriers to having children.So it’s not abnormal to see a normal Jewish families having 3kids and the state encourages this by providing fertility treatments, over 14weeks maternity leave, jobs guarantee of 1year and Israeli women with difficulties conceiving get full state funding for IVF until they get 2 children. They get multiple tries. Plus you will be surprised that Israel has one of the most advanced medical systems in the world, their healthcare covers most of the pre birth checks ,to detect healthy babies and they lead the word in women’s health services. So all this also helps .
This are some of the things that I noticed there and which I always believed the CCP and other developed countries suffering from low birth rates should send their officials to Israel to learn from their example/success in defying this odds.
iI am actually surprised that even with the collapsing birth rates there is still a 3 children policy in China(instead of lifting it altogether).So if there are some Chinese peopleof course there must some people among the billion plus )who want to have more than 3 children they have to pay a fine officially. Shows how stupid their policies have been in this sector. lol. It’s crazy to see that China despite not yet being a fully developed country yet already has a lower birth rate than even western developed countries who have been developed and industrialized for over a century. It shouldn’t be this way, not at this stage of development anyway. So something went terribly wrong somewhere .