Page 75 - IJPS-11-3

International Journal of
Population Studies Low fertility intentions in China

“To achieve sustainable development and a higher from degradation (as laid out in Goals 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15),
quality of life for all people, States should reduce but it could be portrayed as violating Goals 1 and 2, which
and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production see population growth as a risk factor for poverty and food
and consumption and promote appropriate insecurity.
demographic policies.” Rio Declaration, Principle 8 Given these paradoxes, we revisited the document that
(United Nations, 1992). originally institutionalized the principles of sustainable
“Sustainable development as a means to ensure development. We unravel this difficult conundrum from
human well-being, equitably shared by all Principle 6 of Chapter II of the ICPD Programme of Action.
people today and in the future, requires that the Dynamic balance is an important pointer from the verse:
interrelationship between population, resources, “...requires that the interrelationship between population,
the environment and development should be fully resources, the environment, and development should be
recognized, appropriately managed and brought fully recognized, appropriately managed, and brought into
into harmonious, dynamic balance.” International harmonious, dynamic balance” (United Nations, 1994). We
Conference on Population and Development learned to see the two paradoxical narratives as the inevitable
(ICPD) Programme of Action, Chapter II, Principle repercussions that follow when diverse humanity works
6 (United Nations, 1994). toward a common cause, tumbling into the cumbersome
Fast forward 44 years to 2023, and the nation’s task of comprehending the constant changes of ecological
demographic discourse has swapped the fear of and human nature, as well as balancing the dynamism
overpopulation for domestic and global fertility of the four interrelated aspects of population, resources,
challenges (Dörflinger & Loichinger, 2024). The long-term environment, and development. Given this understanding
implementation of the one-child policy has imbalanced the and the empirical evidence of dire population projections,
sex ratio at birth, shrank the labor resources, and aggravated the authors maintain that the present population dynamics
population aging. Meanwhile, the principle of sustainable support China’s pressing concerns with low fertility.
development, which was first institutionalized at the 1992 The population dynamics for sustainable development
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, has been incarnated as are being confronted with the interconnected problems of
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has since low fertility rates and population aging. This is especially
become an important subject in modern discourse regarding true of the challenges faced by today’s China. In 2022, China’s
community development and individual lifestyles. total fertility rate (TFR) fell to an estimated record low of
These two developments have induced two 1.09 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2022), trailing
contradictory perspectives on population growth for both the “replacement rate” of 2.1 and the “low fertility trap
sustainable development. On the one hand, especially from rate” of 1.5 (OECD, 2022). It is a rate that predicts severe
the environmentalists’ perspective, a shrinking population, underpopulation and exacerbates the process of regaining
particularly through reproductive choices, is applauded as normal levels of generational replacement. While China’s
a means of conserving natural resources and mollifying fertility decline has unique drivers rooted in its historical
environmental degradation (Batchelor, 2019); on the other one-child policy, the challenge of low fertility is not
hand, based upon the present declining fertility rates, unique to China. Globally, countries, such as Japan (1.26),
demographic studies have shown alarming forecasts of Singapore (1.05), South Korea (0.7), Italy (1.2), and Spain
population decline that may prove challenging to rectify (1.2) are also grappling with declining fertility rates and their
(Guillemot et al., 2024) and inadvertently hinder broader consequences for sustainable development (OECD, 2022)
objectives of sustainable development (Alam et al., 2019). Meanwhile, the country also grapples with a
As contentious as the two narratives appear to be, pronounced aging population, with its older population
we should not be surprised, given that the concept of growing dramatically from approximately 130 million
sustainable development is a combination of two rather (or 10.2% of the total population) in 2000 to nearly 254
distinctive concepts: sustain and develop. Hickel’s (2019) million (or 18.1% of the total population) in 2019 (Wang
findings show that Goal 8 violates the sustainability et al., 2022). These recent developments are leading to a
objectives of the SDGs, indicating that the SDGs are not decrease in its working-age population and diminishing
without contradictions. As much as this study would like the demographic dividend that the country has had since
to claim contribution to Goals 3, 8, and 10 for attending the 1980s (Meng, 2023), posing significant challenges to
to the problem of low fertility, we are aware that, not only China’s economic and social developments.
may it not be as convincingly compatible with goals that In response to these challenges, the Chinese government
emphasize “harmony with nature” or to protect the planet changed its family planning policy from a one-child policy

Volume 11 Issue 3 (2025) 69 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.5124