The Economist October 1st 2022
In 2004 Mr Guo complained that “direct Population control
governmental intervention” was harming
China’s economy. Investment decisions
were “divorced from market realities”,
costs posed no constraints, “risk is not
borne by anyone and cannot be attributed
to anyone.” Many of those concerns have
stayed with him in his later roles as a fi-
nancial regulator. Last year he warned that
property was a “grey rhino”, a big, obvious,
but neglected risk. He was right.
Unlike other candidates, Mr Guo is a
doer and a thinker. He was governor of
Shandong province and chairman of China
Construction Bank, a state-owned giant,
where he tried to instil a more “customer-
centred approach”.
The most likely successor to Mr Liu,
however, is He Lifeng, known for his Xi-
centred approach. The head of China’s
planning agency, Mr He was educated at
Xiamen University in Fujian province,
where Mr Xi spent over 17 years of his ca-
reer. He took the future president out for
drinks in Xiamen and showed him the
town, according to the Wall Street Journal.
He also attended Mr Xi’s second wedding.
As a local official in the province, Mr He
was known for demolishing buildings,
contributing to GDP if not to wealth.
Mr He helps oversee Mr Xi’s Belt and
Road Initiative, an effort to build infra-
structure and trade routes across the globe.
Before that, in 2002, he co-edited a book
about China’s entry into the World Trade
Organisation. It warned that anti-socialist
forces would use the WTO and the internet
to spread Western values and spiritual
“opium” to China. WTO membership would
also open the door to multinational firms
resistant to the party’s influence. Mr He’s
fears separate him from more cosmopoli-
tan economists. But Mr Xi is also prone to
thinking that Westerners press reforms on
China not to strengthen its economy but to
weaken the party’s control.
Whoever becomes the next economic
“tsar” will struggle to live up to the title. He
will only be as powerful as Mr Xi wants him
to be. Even the formidable Mr Zhu disliked
the term. Decisions are made collectively,
he told a reporter in 1994. If his views on
the economy had weight, it was because he
had devoted most of his energy to econom-
ic work and had not “made any major mis-
takes”. Today there is only one tsar. And
nothing, certainly not economics, falls
outside his purview. 
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uninterested in having big families. In
Procreative
differences
BE IJING
China is trying to get people to have
more babies. Its efforts may be in vain
G ive officials in Hebei province points
for originality. To encourage locals to
have more babies, they recently enlisted a
troupe of women to shout at them. While
banging pots and a drum they yelled out
slogans such as, “Giving birth is an impor-
tant part of life!” and “The three-child poli-
cy is good!” The latter refers to an official
scheme which encourages women to have
up to three children.
The family-planning office behind the
performance is of the sort that used to en-
force the “one-child policy”, which was
adopted in the 1980s and relaxed in 2015.
Back then families were fined for having
too many children. Some women were
subjected to forced abortions or sterilisa-
tion. Such horrors sprang from two beliefs:
that China was becoming too crowded, and
that individuals had no right to control
their own fertility.
Today China’s leaders are worried that
the country is producing too few people.
After this year the population will probably
start shrinking. Just 10.6m people were
born in China last year, slightly more than
the number of deaths. With the number of
old people swelling, the workforce has
been shrinking for years. That acts as a drag
on economic growth and creates a huge
burden of care, which China’s social-secu-
rity system is ill equipped to handle.
The three-child policy was announced
last year (it had been a two-child policy
since 2015). But most young people seem
Would you mind having another?
China 25
2020 the average number of births per
woman fell to 1.3, well below the 2.1 needed
to keep the population growing.
Most pro-natalist policies in China try
to ease the financial strain on parents.
Some cities offer cash. One in Gansu prov-
ince promised to give parents 10,000 yuan
($1,397) a year for three years if they had a
third child (and half that for a second).
Other cities have pledged to build more
cheap nurseries. (As it is, most families re-
ly on grandparents or costly nannies to
look after their tots.) State-owned firms in
one province were asked to cut rent by 15%
for families with three children.
The population of Jilin province is
shrinking quickly. So it has given single
women access to in-vitro fertilisation,
which is available only to married women
in much of China. Beijing and Shanghai
have extended maternity leave by 30 days,
to just over five months. The central gov-
ernment says firms must not discriminate
against mothers. Officials are also urging
fathers to help with child care and telling
companies to extend paternity leave.
The tactics are sometimes different in
the countryside. A proposal dubbed “Oper-
ation Bed Warming” in a county in Hunan
province aimed to dissuade women from
leaving for better opportunities in cities.
Women should stay and marry local men,
said the plan. Marriage is not a matter of
personal freedom, a supporter told a local
paper. “For the advancement of society, fu-
ture generations are needed,” he said.
So far there is little sign that any of this
is working. One problem is that the poli-
cies are not generous enough. It costs, on
average, nearly half a million yuan to bring
up a child in China, according to a recent
report. In big cities it costs more. Perhaps a
subsidy of 10,000 yuan per month would
be adequate, says Amanda, a Chinese
woman who recently got married. For now,
she’s not planning to have children.
It may be that nothing China does can
arrest the fall in births, says Wang Feng of
the University of California, Irvine. As pop-
ulations grow more urban and educated,
women have fewer babies, in China as in
other countries. South Korea and Japan,
which have similarly low fertility rates,
have been trying to prod citizens to repro-
duce more for decades, with little success.
China’s efforts are also hampered by the
legacy of the one-child policy, which was
ultimately self-defeating and left indelible
scars. Procreation is now a highly sensitive
subject. Many bristle when the govern-
ment tries to get involved. Last year a com-
petition to come up with new slogans for
the three-child policy appears to have been
abandoned after a flurry of angry sugges-
tions. “Have more kids to look after you
when you’re old,” went one. “The govern-
ment won’t do it.” 