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How China Miscalculated Its Way to a Baby Bust
中国出现生育低谷的速度比许多人预期的要快，这引发了对人口结构崩溃的担忧。而且，由于40多年前的误判，如今应对这种生育低谷的形势可能变得更加复杂。
去年，深圳，一名女性抱着一名婴儿。 China’s baby bust is happening faster than many expected, raising fears of a demographic collapse. And coping with the fallout may now be complicated by miscalculations made more than 40 years ago. 6park.com
中国出现生育低谷的速度比许多人预期的要快，这引发了对中国人口结构崩溃的担忧。而且，由于40多年前的误判，如今应对这种生育低谷的形势可能变得更加复杂。 6park.com
中国的独生子女政策是1980年开始实施的历史上规模最大的社会实验之一，如今发生的快速转变是当初的决策者所没有预料到的。当时，世界各国政府都担心人口过多会阻碍经济增长。一位在莫斯科接受过导弹训练的科学家牵头推动了中国的这一政策，其依据是将用于计算火箭轨迹的数学模型应用于计算人口增长。 6park.comThe rapid shift under way today wasn’t projected by the architects of China’s one-child policy—one of the biggest social experiments in history, instituted in 1980. At the time, governments around the world feared overpopulation would hold back economic growth. A Moscow-trained missile scientist led the push for China’s policy, based on tables of calculations that applied mathematical models used to calculate rocket trajectories to population growth. 6park.com
40年后的今天，中国的老龄化比其他主要经济体都早得多。少子化和高龄化的转变有可能阻碍经济增长。在没有兄弟姐妹的环境下成长起来的这一代人中，年轻女性越来越不愿生育，而且年轻女性的数量也在逐年下降。对于如何改变这一政策塑造的观念，中国政府束手无策。 6park.comFour decades later, China is aging much earlier in its development than other major economies did. The shift to fewer births and more elderly citizens threatens to hold back economic growth. In a generation that grew up without siblings, young women are increasingly reluctant to have children—and there are fewer of them every year. Beijing is at a loss to change the mindset brought about by the policy.
Births in China fell by more than 500,000 last year, according to recent government data, accelerating a population drop that started in 2022. Officials cited a quickly shrinking number of women of childbearing age—more than three million fewer than a year earlier—and acknowledged “changes in people’s thinking about births, postponement of marriage and childbirth.” 6park.com
根据最近的政府数据，去年中国的出生人口减少了50多万，加速了2022年开始的人口下降。官员们称这是因为育龄妇女人数迅速减少（比一年前减少了300多万），并承认人们的生育观念发生了变化，许多女性推迟结婚和生育。 6park.com
一些研究人员认为，政府低估了这个问题的严重性，人口开始萎缩的时间甚至更早。 6park.comSome researchers argue the government underestimates the problem, and the population began to shrink even earlier. 6park.com
上述数据公布后，澳大利亚维多利亚大学(Victoria University in Australia)和上海社会科学院(Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)的研究人员预测，到本世纪末，中国将只有5.25亿人口。这低于他们之前预测的5.97亿人，比现在的14亿人急剧下降。 6park.comFollowing the data release, researchers from Victoria University in Australia and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences predicted that China will have just 525 million people by the end of the century. That’s down from their previous forecast of 597 million and a precipitous drop from 1.4 billion now. 6park.com
澳大利亚维多利亚大学高级研究员、在墨尔本牵头进行人口研究工作的彭秀健说：“我们对2022年和2023年的预测已经很低了，但实际情况却更糟。” 6park.com“Our forecasts for 2022 and 2023 were already low but the real situation has turned out to be worse,” said Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Victoria University who leads the population research in Melbourne. 6park.com
中国的生育率接近每名妇女生育一个孩子，不到保持人口稳定的2.1更替率的一半。20世纪70年代末，中国的生育率徘徊在3左右。 6park.comChina’s fertility rate is approaching one birth for every woman, less than half the 2.1 replacement rate that keeps a population stable. In the late 1970s, the fertility rate hovered around 3. 6park.com
当时，中国刚刚走出文化大革命的混乱局面，即将开始经济改革。一群科学家对中国领导人表示，除非开始限制生育，否则一百年后中国将有超过40亿张嘴要吃饭，中国领导人邓小平和其他官员为此忧心不已。 6park.comAt the time, China was coming out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and about to embark on economic reforms. The country’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, and other officials became alarmed when a group of scientists told them that unless they started restricting births, China would have more than four billion mouths to feed in a hundred years. 6park.com
官方媒体《人民日报》在1980年初发表了一篇由其中一些科学家撰写的文章，建议中国寻找应对人口过剩的办法，“把生育率降到1......每对夫妇只生一个孩子”。 6park.comAn essay by some of the scientists published by the official People’s Daily in early 1980 suggested China’s search for a response to overpopulation “points to bringing the fertility rate down to 1…each couple having only one child.” 6park.com
那年秋天，中国开始在全国范围内实施独生子女政策。但这些计算忽略了一些关键因素。 6park.comThat fall, China started enforcing the one-child policy nationwide—but the calculations had missed some crucial factors.
1985年，成都一块宣传独生子女政策的广告牌。
人口担忧 China wasn’t the only country worried about overpopulation at the time. The rapid rise in the global population in the 1960s and ‘70s prompted fears that humanity would reproduce faster than food production could rise, an idea argued nearly two centuries earlier by economist Thomas Malthus. 6park.com
中国并不是当时唯一担心人口过剩的国家。上世纪六、七十年代全球人口迅速增长，点燃了对人类生育速度将超过粮食增产速度的担忧，经济学家托马斯·马尔萨斯(Thomas Malthus)早在近两个世纪前就提出了这一观点。 6park.com
文革之后，中国官方加大力度重振科研。之前社会科学家曾受到毛泽东的红卫兵迫害，而其他从事军事相关工作的科学家则在一定程度上受到保护。 6park.comChinese officials were increasingly reviving scientific research after the Cultural Revolution. While social scientists had been persecuted by Mao’s Red Guards, others doing work related to the military had been partly shielded. 6park.com
这其中包括宋健，他是中国原子弹之父的门生，也是中国研究卫星和火箭的顶尖科学家之一。宋健曾在莫斯科学习，获得了控制论（数学的一个分支）和军事科学的高级学位。军方官员将他派往戈壁沙漠上的火箭和卫星发射场，以躲避文革乱局。 6park.comThe group included Song Jian, a protégé of the father of China’s atomic-bomb program and one of China’s top scientists working on satellites and rockets. Song had studied in Moscow, where he got advanced degrees in a branch of mathematics known as control theory and in military science. Military officials sent him to a launch site for rockets and satellites in the Gobi Desert to escape the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. 6park.com
宋健最终成为中国主管科技的高级政府成员。他今年92岁。对于向国务院和中国工程院(Chinese Academy of Engineering)提出的置评请求，宋健未予回应。 6park.comSong, who eventually became China’s senior cabinet member heading science and technology, is now 92. He didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to the State Council and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. 6park.com
1975年，宋健作为一个中国学术代表团的成员访问荷兰特文特大学(University of Twente)，在那里他结识了荷兰数学家Geert Jan Olsder。三年后，两人在芬兰的一次会议上第二次见面。 6park.comIn 1975, Song had been part of a Chinese academic delegation visiting the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where he got to know a Dutch mathematician, Geert Jan Olsder. Three years later, the two met a second time, at a conference in Finland. 6park.com
现年80多岁的Olsder表示，他当时谈论了自己与其他数学家的研究如何从全球资源有限的警告中受到启发，以及如何将数学模型应用于出生率。 6park.comOlsder, now in his 80s, said he talked about how his research with other mathematicians had been inspired by the warnings about finite global resources and how mathematical models could be applied to birthrates.
2004年，宋健与荷兰数学家Geert Jan Olsder在一起。 Song spoke with the others in fluent English and showed a clear interest in mathematical modeling, Olsder wrote in an email. If the two hadn’t met, he said, he’s sure that some kind of population policy would have started in China, but perhaps a little later. “I feel like a domino stone in a long series of such stones,” he wrote. 6park.com
Olsder在一封电子邮件中写道，宋健用流利的英语与其他人交谈，并对数学建模表现出浓厚兴趣。Olsder表示，如果他和宋健没有会面，他相信中国也会开始实施某种人口政策，但可能会晚一些。Olsder写道，他觉得自己就像一长串多米诺骨牌中的一块。 6park.com
在接下来的几年里，宋健完善了他的建模，并与一个科学家团队开始计算不同的生育率会如何影响中国的人口数量。1979年底，宋健开始向官员们提交基于他们建模的报告。他计算出，按照每个妇女生育三个婴儿的固定生育率，到2080年，中国人口将达到42.6亿。 6park.comSong refined his modeling over the next few years, and with a team of scientists began calculating how different fertility rates could affect China’s population size. In late 1979 he began to present officials with reports based on their modeling. He calculated that, at a constant fertility rate of three babies for every woman, China’s population would hit 4.26 billion by 2080. 6park.com 6park.com凭借计算机辅助的数学模型和政治人脉，宋健吸引到高层领导人的注意。曾撰写过数本有关独生子女政策书籍的哈佛大学人类学家葛苏珊(Susan Greenhalgh)说，宋健认为人口的快速增长会阻碍中国成为一个富裕的现代化国家。 6park.comWith his computer-assisted mathematical models and political connections, Song caught the attention of top leaders. He argued that rapid population growth would prevent China from becoming a rich, modern country, said Susan Greenhalgh, an anthropologist at Harvard University who has written books about the one-child policy. 6park.com
葛苏珊说：“宋健用一种人口-经济-生态危机即将到来的可怕论调来说服人们。” 6park.com“He used a frightening narrative of a coming demographic-economic-ecological crisis to persuade people,” she said. 6park.com
为了打消人们的疑虑，官员们当时曾表示，如果出生率下降太多，中国可以改变政策。中共中央在1980年致共产党员和共青团员的一封公开信中说：“到30年以后，特别紧张的人口增长问题就可以缓和，也就可以采取不同的人口政策了。” 6park.comTo ward off skepticism, officials said China could switch gears if births dropped too much. “In 30 years, the current problem of especially dreadful population growth may be alleviated and then [we can] adopt different population policies,” the Communist Party said in an open letter in 1980. 6park.com
实际情况是在短短十年多一点的时间内，生育率已降至更替率以下。只是年轻女性群体仍然庞大，这使得中国人口还能继续增长。但新生女孩的数量却在迅速减少。 6park.comWithin a little more than a decade, the fertility rate had dipped below the replacement rate. The cohort of young women was still massive, which kept the population growing. But the number of newborn girls was quickly dwindling.
1989年，北京，一家妇产医院里的婴儿。
影响
As the decades passed, a growing number of demographers and economists called out the policy as outdated and flawed. China’s fertility rate would have gone down on its own as life expectancies rose and economic conditions improved, they say. 6park.com
几十年过去了，越来越多的人口统计学家和经济学家认为这项政策已过时且存在缺陷。他们说，随着预期寿命延长和经济状况的改善，中国的生育率会自行下降。 6park.com
宋健的人口数学中没有考虑到的一个因素是人类行为。中国政府有时会采取包括强制堕胎和绝育在内的粗暴措施，再加上数十年来政府一直宣传小家庭的好处，因此在民众心里种下了一种持久的独生子女心态。这种模式也没有考虑到传统的重男轻女观念。如果一对夫妇只能生一个孩子，他们更愿意生男孩。 6park.comOne factor missing from Song’s population math was human behavior. The government’s sometimes brutal enforcement, including forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as decadeslong propaganda about the benefits of having a small family, left a lasting one-child mindset. The modeling also failed to take into account the traditional preference for sons. If couples could only have one child, they would prefer to have a boy. 6park.com
年轻女性现在是中国人口困境的核心。她们越来越不愿意生育，生育率逐年下降。 6park.comYoung women are now at the core of China’s demographic dilemma. They are increasingly reluctant to have children—and there are fewer of them every year. 6park.com
哈佛大学人类学家葛苏珊说，在独生子女政策下长大的女性是按照中国政府的目标成长起来的，即人口数量较少但质量高：受过良好教育、干练且独立。她说：“这些女性不会接受回到家庭做家庭主妇。” 6park.comGreenhalgh, the Harvard anthropologist, said that the women growing up under the one-child policy were raised in line with Beijing’s goals of a smaller but what it called “higher-quality” population: well-educated, savvy and independent. “These women are not going to accept going back to the family to be housewives,” she said. 6park.com
研究人员说，除了文化和社会变化外，宋健的模型也没有考虑到经济因素，例如邓小平改革引发的大规模涌入城市的移民潮，这在降低生育率方面起到了超乎想象的作用。 6park.comApart from cultural and social changes, Song’s model hadn’t taken into account economic forces, such as the enormous migration flows to cities unleashed by Deng’s reforms, which played a bigger role than anyone had imagined in pushing down fertility rates, researchers have said. 6park.com
现在领导上海社会科学院上述研究团队的退休人口学家左学金十多年前就对中国人口问题的暴发敲响了警钟，他当时表示，当年实施计划生育措施的必要条件都已逐渐消失了。 6park.comZuo Xuejin, a retired demographer who is leading the research team at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, sounded alarms about demographic implosion more than a decade ago, saying the conditions that may have warranted birth-restriction measures had all faded away.
2023年，游客在北京故宫拍照留念。
2020年，武汉，一名护士在一家私立妇产医院照看一名新生儿。 “For many years overpopulation was China’s major concern. It was difficult to convince the government and the public that China will have the problem of fast decline and aging of the population,” Zuo wrote in an email. 6park.com
左学金在在一封电子邮件中写道，多年来，人口过多一直是中国的主要担忧。过去很难让政府和公众相信中国会出现人口快速下降和老龄化的问题。 6park.com
宋健说，他认为这在当时是一个正确的判断。他在母校济南大学2010年发表的一篇文章中写道：一百年来中外政治家和知识界担忧的“中国人口大爆炸”的引信已被拆除。他写道：“零增长是现代人类的归宿，当代中国的急务。”他当时估计，中国的人口要到2035年以后才会开始减少。他的估计偏差了超过十年，官方数据显示中国人口从2022年开始减少。 6park.comSong has said he believed it had been a good call. China had successfully defused the bomb that could have led to a “population explosion,” he wrote in a 2010 essay published by the University of Jinan, his alma mater. “Zero growth [in population] is the destiny of modern mankind and an urgent task for contemporary China,” Song wrote. He estimated China’s population wouldn’t start shrinking until after 2035. He was off by more than a decade, with official data showing the drop starting in 2022. 6park.com
中国政府称，这一政策阻止了4亿人口的出生，并经常将此作为中国对世界做出的贡献，包括在 2009年的哥本哈根气候峰会上。人口学家对这一数字提出了质疑，这些专家表示，随着经济条件的改善，中国的生育率会自行下降。 6park.comBeijing has said the policy prevented 400 million births, a claim it has often put forth as a kind of Chinese gift to the world, including at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. Demographers have disputed the figure, saying China’s fertility rate would have gone down on its own as economic conditions improved.
人口学家很着急 Even when Beijing dropped the one-child policy in 2015, leaders didn’t abolish birth restrictions altogether. Instead, it just pivoted to a two-child policy. Now, Beijing is urging people to have three, trumpeting the need to return to a “birth-friendly culture.” 6park.com
即便2015年中国政府取消了独生子女政策，也没有完全废除生育限制，而是改为二孩政策。现在，中国政府呼吁一对夫妇生育三个孩子，宣扬中国需要回归生育友好型文化。 6park.com
企业家、经济学家和人口学家都努力传达这样一个观点：中国需要更多婴儿。 6park.comEntrepreneurs, economists and demographers have tried to convey the idea that China needs more babies. 6park.com
旅行服务提供商携程集团(Trip.com Group)的联合创始人兼董事长、北京大学经济学教授梁建章(James Liang)与人共同创办了专注于人口和公共政策分析的民间智库育娲人口研究(YuWa Population Research Institute)。 6park.comJames Liang, co-founder and chairman of travel service provider Trip.com Group and a research professor of economics at Peking University, co-founded YuWa Population Research Institute, a private think tank focused on demographic and public policy analysis. 6park.com
梁建章估计，中国需将国内生产总值(GDP)的5%用于直接补贴，以鼓励生育并降低养育子女的成本，才能使生育率恢复到发达经济体的平均水平1.4，这一支出比例与教育支出大致相当。他的公司每年为长期员工发放每个孩子人民币10,000元（合1,406 美元）的现金奖励，直到孩子年满5岁。 6park.comLiang estimated that China needs to devote 5% of its gross domestic product—roughly equivalent to its education spending—on direct subsidies to promote births and lower the costs of raising children in order for the fertility rate to recover to 1.4, the average rate of advanced economies. His company gives its long-term employees an annual cash bonus of 10,000 yuan ($1,406) for each of their children until they are 5 years old. 6park.com
人口学家们正在设法了解中国出生率迅速下降的最新情况。联合国(United Nations)对中国人口的预测已与现实情况不符，该预期是基于中国 2020 年的人口普查，并假定生育率为 1.19。 6park.comDemographers are trying to catch up on the rapidly falling births. The United Nations’ population predictions for China, which were based on the country’s 2020 census and assumed a fertility rate of 1.19, are already out of step with reality. 6park.com
联合国人口估计和预测部门负责人Patrick Gerland说，他们的计算试图反映长期趋势，并不是为快速变化而设计的。他同意其他研究人员的观点，即中国的生育率更接近 1.0。 6park.comPatrick Gerland, head of the U.N.’s population estimates and projection section, said their computing tries to capture long-term trends and isn’t made for rapid changes. He agrees with other researchers that put China’s fertility rate closer to 1.0. 6park.com
他说：“对于中国这样一个生育率从一年到下一年变化如此之快的国家，我们的人口（预测）结果将小于两年前的预期。”联合国计划在 7 月份更新其预测。 6park.com“In the case of a country like China where the fertility from one year to the next year has been changing so fast, we’ll have smaller population [projections] than what we had expected two years ago,” he said. The U.N. plans to update its forecasts in July.
1月，北京，老年人在一个公园里锻炼身体。
2022年，阜阳，孩子们从学校步行回家。 Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a critic of China’s birth restrictions, has long argued the situation is even worse than official data suggests. Yi believes China’s population actually started shrinking years ago, based on birth estimates pieced together from other available data, such as school enrollment and the number of vaccines for newborns. 6park.com
威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的妇产科高级科学家、中国计划生育政策的批评者易富贤长期以来一直认为，中国的情况比官方数据显示的还要糟糕。易富贤认为，根据其他可获得的数据（如入学人数和新生儿疫苗接种量）拼凑出的出生人口估计数，中国的人口实际上早在多年前就开始减少了。 6park.com
“几十年来中国所有的人口政策都是基于错误的预测，”易富贤说。“中国的人口危机超出了中国官员和国际社会的想象。” 6park.com“All of China’s population policies for decades have been based on erroneous projections,” Yi said. “China’s demographic crisis is beyond the imagination of Chinese officials and the international community.” 6park.com
北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的社会学家蔡泳说，一代年轻人一旦下定决心，他们的想法就很难改变。 6park.comOnce a generation of young people has made up their minds, it’s hard to change them, said Cai Yong, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 6park.com
蔡泳说，随着官方发布信息和政策向新一代宣传扩大家庭规模，生育率现在有可能提高，但“即使提高，也不会在短期内提高”。 6park.comIt’s possible fertility rates could now increase with official messages and policies promoting bigger families to a newer generation, said Cai, but “if it’s going to happen, it’s not going to happen in the short term.”
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