Tailored policies needed for demographic changes

A drop of 850,000 in the country's population in the year 2022, which was announced by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, is the first in six decades since 1962.

This demographic change comes almost a decade earlier than the Chinese government and the United Nations projected. Which necessitates adjustment in the country's social policies.

In the first place, much more work needs to be done to encourage young couples to have more children. Specific measures should be adopted to relieve young people of their worries about the expense and difficulties involved in raising their children-housing, kindergartens, schools, childcare and other related problems.

Conducive conditions need to be created for young people to be willing to have children. For example, women of child-bearing age should be relieved of the worries about their career development.

Subsidies need to be considered to encourage couples to have more kids, which should considerably ease the financial burden of parents.

With negative population growth comes the rapid expansion of an aging population, and it is expected that people above 60 will make up 30 percent of the population around the year 2035. This too requires the making of specific policies and detailed implementation of policies concerning pensions, care for the aged and development of related services for this burgeoning social group.

While tailored policies are essential to address the country's demographic changes, it should be recognized that the decline of population growth is an unavoidable trend of a country's economic and social development. As material well-being improves, people have less desire for children.

Although there will be no short supply of labor as far as economic development is concerned in the years to come, according to information from the National Bureau of Statistics, as high-quality development will be sustained by artificial intelligence and robots as well as other automation technologies. But attention needs to be paid to the training of professionals and technicians to facilitate this so that industrial development is kept compatible with the structure of the country's population.

The demographic changes should serve as a reminder that the country must further its endeavor to modernize. Modernized industries, agriculture and services are indispensable for the country to deal with all the problems brought about by the new demographic development pattern.