China's Population Challenges

    China's biggest concern at the moment is over-population.  Its a country of over 1.3 billion people that must be sustained on around 9.6 million square kilometers, much of which is mountainous (Collins, ).  To combat this, the government introduced the One Child Policy, which states that you aren't allowed to have more than one child in China.  However, this creates 2 more problems.  Firstly, due to preference of boys over girls of the many farmers in China, girls are often aborted.  This means that there aren't enough women for all of the men.  However, the government saw this problem, and implemented many "pro-girl" campaigns, and provide benefits for rural families with girls.  The government also allows you to try for another child if your first one is a girl.  Secondly, the One Child Policy will soon lead to population decline (inevitable, as China has a fertility rate of 1.5, while the optimal rate of keeping the population stable is 2.1), as seen in the projected populations for 2025 and 2050.  Over this period of 25 years, the population is predicted to decline from 1476 million to 1437 million (Haub, 2010), a decline of 39 million people, more than the current population of Canada.  However, this solves the problem of over-population, does it not?  Well it does, but in doing so, it also throws the balence between the working age people and the dependency load, namely the seniors.  China's current percentage of population over 65 is pretty good, at 8%.  However, it has a very low percentage of population under 15 (18%) (Haub, 2010), which means that when today's children become working adults, they will be unable to support the large dependency load created by the currently large working age (who will retire).

As you can see, in 2010, there is a large group working aged people, and the pyramid looks relatively stable (other than the small base). However, by 2050, there are few young people and working age people, who have to support many elderly citizens.

    Another problem that China has is the fact that 94% of the country's population is in just 43% of the land (Encyclopaedia Brittanica, no date).  This is because many people from rural areas move to the urban ones, where the conditions are better.  This causes a problem, as there are too many people in one place, meaning that diseases have the potential to spread very quickly.

Urban China

Rural China