by Ji Siqi in SCMP, June 11, 2023
A decline in the population of China’s biggest cities is cause for concern but it is dwarfed by the country’s biggest demographic challenge – the falling birth rate, an analyst and an official newspaper said.

In a commentary on Saturday, state-owned Economic Daily said that while the population decline last year in the four largest mainland cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen – should be taken seriously, it should not cause too much anxiety.

“The decrease in resident populations in Beijing and Shanghai is the result of the megacities’ active and reasonable control of population size based on resource conditions and functional positioning,” the article said.

According to official data, the four cities reported a combined loss of more than 275,000 people last year.

Megacities Beijing and Shanghai are no strangers to such declines, as they have strict population inflow policies in place to restrict rapid urban expansion. However, it is a new trend for manufacturing and tech hubs Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which had seen the fastest population growth in the country between 2010 and 2022.

The number of Guangzhou residents fell by 76,500 to 18.73 million in 2022, while Shenzhen shrank to about 17.68 million, a drop of 19,800.

This is the first time Shenzhen has seen negative population growth since late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping made it a special economic zone in 1979, a move that transformed the former sleepy fishing village to today’s economic powerhouse.

Beijing and Shanghai had controlled population inflows over the past decade to relieve “big city diseases” such as traffic congestion and worsening living conditions.

As for manufacturing powerhouses Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the Economic Daily article said strict Covid-19 control measures imposed last year forced many migrant workers from inland provinces to go back home as jobs dried up. Guangdong province, where both cities are located, expected population growth to pick up again this year, it added.

The commentary said multiple factors, including urban governance, industrial chain relocation and living costs, could affect the rise and fall of populations in major cities, especially as the national population peaked.

China’s population declined for the first time in six decades last year, plunging by 850,000 to 1.4118 billion, and the annual birth rate fell to a record low of 6.77 for every 1,000 people.

The deepening demographic crisis for the world’s No 2 economy threatens to have far-reaching implications for growth.

Huang Wenzheng, a senior fellow at the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation, said an occasional small decline in the population of some big cities might not reflect a long-term trend.

“The biggest problem China faces is its declining youth population, especially [the drop in] new births. This will have disastrous impacts on all industries in China in the long term, as well as a very negative impact on the future investment confidence of the whole country,” Huang said.

Moreover, the experience of Tokyo and Moscow had shown that big cities might see slower shrinkage in numbers than smaller ones amid an overall decline in population, as they continued to attract people from elsewhere in the country, he added.

“As the speed of population decline in China in the future could be much faster than what Japan and Russia have experienced, people coming to bigger cities would still be the trend in the long term.”

However, Huang warned that excessive control over the size of megacities might curb opportunities for future economic development, as young migrants – who can bring energy and innovation – were driven away.

Moreover, bigger cities such as Beijing and Shanghai had the land resources to accommodate further urban expansion, he said.

“Higher property prices and traffic congestion are the prices of population growth and urban development. If you don’t want to pay these prices by controlling the size of cities, it means you cannot get the benefits from it either.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3223647/chinas-falling-birth-rate-may-have-more-disastrous-effect-declining-numbers-major-cities