China Is Heading for Zero Births

China is crashing towards a childless 
society, while, surprise surprise,  

the Chinese government is finding ways to make the 
situation even more dystopian than it already is.

Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.  

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Now back to the episode.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is great with kids.

He gives them important lessons,

He shows them how to use a bucket safely,

and he even tackles them, just for a bit of fun.

Plus he sometimes sends them and their 
families off to camps for free. What fun!

In fact, Xi’s many interactions with  

Chinese children have landed him the 
nickname “Grandpa Xi” in Chinese state  

media. And that’s the only nickname he 
has. The rest definitely aren’t censored.

And Grandpa Xi and his government 
are so stoked about children that  

they want Chinese people to have more of them.

To achieve that, in recent years, 
the Chinese authorities have rolled  

out all sorts of incentives to try 
to encourage Chinese baby-making,

from subsidies and tax breaks for families

to free fertility treatments 
for couples trying to conceive.

Some local officials might have gone to the 
task with a bit too much enthusiasm, though, 

like those calling women to ask 
whether they are pregnant, and,  

if not, when they’re planning to be. 

Which shouldn’t be a surprise. 
Given how the CCP treats Taiwan,  

you can tell they don’t respect boundaries.

Yet, despite all the various 
attempts, it’s not working.

China’s birth rate is declining fast,  

resulting in the national population 
falling three years in a row now,   

and it has set the stage for 
China to become a severely  

aging society by 2035. And that’s coming 
from my favorite Chinese state-run media,  

Global Times, and the CCP health authority, 
so the situation might be even worse!

Hm, maybe if women get calls by even 
more strangers from the government  

asking probing questions, that’ll 
put them in a baby-making mood.

The situation even appears to be accelerating, 
as it came out recently that Chinese marriage  

rates took a record-setting plunge in 2024 – 
dropping by about a fifth compared to 2023.  

That was an even deeper drop than during COVID,  

leaving marriage numbers at their lowest 
since record-keeping began in 1986.

And with family life in China centered around 
the institution of marriage, no weddings means

no babies.

But as Chinese society races towards zero births,  

it’s not just the prospect of an 
aging society that’s raising alarms.

In fact, China is heading for a geographic 
and ethnic sea change the likes of which  

Grandpa Xi and his government have never 
seen. And really really don’t want to see.

You see, if there’s one thing Xi likes almost as  

much as growing the Chinese family, 
it’s growing the Chinese countryside.

Literally. Here he is inspecting a vegetable 
field in Hubei Province in late 2024 and  

telling farmers how to do stuff. Man, he just 
loves telling people how to spread their seed.

But they love him for it in the rural areas, 
as this very natural clapping scene suggests.  

Such trips to the provinces are 
part of Xi’s push to breathe new  

life into the Chinese countryside 
– a central mission of his.     

Chinese development in the cities,  

especially on the country’s east coast, 
has long outpaced the development

in the countryside, creating one of the 
largest rural-urban income gaps in the world.

At the same time, large parts of rural China are 
plagued by issues such as soil degradation and

deindustrialization.

Do, uh… you have any helpful advice 
for that, Grandpa Xi? Any at all?

But the declining birthrate is now putting 
Xi’s rural development plans under threat.

It actually used to be that higher birth 
numbers in rural China compensated for  

the lower birth rates in the Chinese 
cities, but that is no longer the case.

Today, births among young people in rural areas  

are dropping more rapidly than 
among their urban counterparts.

On top of that, Chinese people continue to 
migrate from the countryside to the cities,  

contributing to some rural areas 
becoming severely depopulated – a  

phenomenon referred to in China as 
“hollowed out” towns and villages.   

And it’s especially bad in some 
of the regions bordering China’s  

neighboring countries. These towns are 
more hollow than one of the CCP’s promises.

Not far from the Chinese border 
with Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam,

which is formed by the two 
southern provinces of Yunnan

and Guangxi,

there have been accounts of border towns 
and villages turning into ghost towns  

after locals either died out or abandoned them 
for better living elsewhere. Which is bleak, 

but at least not as bleak as back 
when places became ghost towns  

because all the locals starved 
to death. Ain’t communism grand?

In the north, along the Chinese 
border with Mongolia and Russia,  

the situation is even more dire.

There, the population of the 
region of Inner Mongolia fell  

from almost 25 million people in 
2010 to just 24 million in 2022,

and the province of Heilongjiang 
went from more than 38 million  

people in 2010 to less than 32 million in 2020. 

These declines have raised deep 
concerns among the Chinese authorities,  

with one government adviser 
saying in November that

“to bolster national security amid 
a countrywide demographic slide,  

China should turn its eyes to the declining 
populations of its towns bordering Central Asia”,

while the ever glorious Global 
Times said last year that Inner  

Mongolia is the "northern gateway" and 
the "moat" of the capital city Beijing

that shoulders a major political 
responsibility in safeguarding  

national security and border stability.

The Global Times also reported that the 
leader of Inner Mongolia had vowed to  

implement “comprehensive measures to attract 
more people to settle and live in border areas,  

and ensure human shields- I mean 
national unity and border security”.

While the population decline is 
immense, it isn’t exactly clear,  

though, what sort of immediate national 
security threats could emerge from it.

After all, it’s rare to see Mongolian hordes 
come riding down from the north these days,

and that’s what the Great Wall proudly 
rises to protect against, anyway.

However, the Chinese Communist Party is 
notoriously obsessed with appearing strong,

and having large stretches of the northern regions 
looking like this doesn’t exactly signal strength.

Certainly not like Grandpa Xi’s super tough rough 
housing. What a tough guy! And an awesome grandpa!

China does have some real 
reasons to want to appear strong.

For example, in the late 19th century, when 
China also looked weak on its northern front,  

Russia seized the opportunity to 
annex vast areas of Chinese territory.

Given the state of the China-Russia 
relationship in the 21st century,  

it seems unlikely that the Russians 
would make a similar move again,

but then, few thought that Putin would 
be crazy enough to invade Ukraine,  

so, who knows. His promises are also 
just as hollow as those ghost towns.

In China’s southern borderlands,  

though, the potential effects of 
depopulation are much more immediate.

In the south, the Chinese government has 
long struggled to assert and maintain  

control, especially along the nearly 
1,400-mile-long border with Myanmar.

Not only is the cross-border area a patchwork 
of ethnic minorities, the dense jungle and  

mountainous terrain also make large stretches 
of the region difficult to traverse and monitor.

This makes the region a hotbed for illicit trade 
and smuggling – including *people* smuggling,  

in which crime syndicates based in Myanmar have 
lured Chinese people into the war-torn country,  

where tens of thousands are currently 
enslaved and forced to work as cyber scammers.

Of course, this explains why people 
might want to leave the area,  

but when locals begin rapidly disappearing, 
either into Chinese cities or into Myanmar  

scam centers, there’s not much left in 
the towns to maintain a strong border.

But not to worry – Xi has an excellent way 
to solve all of China’s rural problems. 

He has called for Chinese youths to make 
greater contributions to rural revitalization.

This sentiment was mirrored by an action plan 
announced in 2023 by the local government in  

Guangdong Province that aims to send 300,000 
college students to the countryside by this  

year. Which I’m sure is just what they 
were hoping to gain from going to college.

This plan would have the added bonus of getting 
unemployed youth out of the cities, where they  

might stir up trouble and unrest and start getting 
crazy ideas about autonomy and freedom of speech.

The whole thing is also a fun throwback to the 
Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when  

millions of Chinese young people were sent to 
the countryside to educate and be educated. Oh,  

and a whole bunch of people 
were killed. You know… fun!

Xi himself has often spoken fondly about the time 
he himself spent in a rural village back then.

Those were indeed splendid days,  

with Chinese youths gathering to exercise 
with hammers on Chinese cultural treasures

and making oversized necklaces for 
their friends and loved ones… fun!

But it’s not just decline and depopulation that  

seem to be spurring desperate moves by the 
Chinese authorities. It’s the demographic  

shifts that come with it. And I’m not 
just talking about an aging society.

Because, while Han Chinese are experiencing 
massively declining birth rates, it’s a different  

matter for the more than 125 million people 
that make up China’s 55 ethnic minority groups.

Regions such as Inner Mongolia,

Gansu Province,

and Guizhou Province…

have all experienced population decline 
in recent years among Han Chinese,  

but this was partly counterbalanced by 
higher birth rates among minority groups.

Across China, 13 percent of all newborns 
had minority background in 2000, and their  

population as a whole was estimated to make up 
almost 9 percent of the total population by 2020,  

which is quite a change from the 1960s, 
when they made up less than 6 percent.

Of course, Xi is super happy 
with all minority groups,  

and even sends some of them and their families 
off to camps for free to thank them… fun!

Now, we do have to be a bit careful with 
these numbers. After all, they’re all based  

on official Chinese figures, which, according 
to researchers, aren’t always the most reliable,  

due to low quality data collection, incentives 
for local governments to either inflate or deflate  

certain population numbers, and the sensitivity 
of the issue for the Chinese leadership.

This means that the actual minority population 
of China and its growth could be higher than  

what the official data shows, which sounds like 
a good thing, given that many minority groups  

live in the border regions where Chinese 
officials are fussing about depopulation.

But the Chinese authorities don’t 
seem to be rejoicing about it.

For example, one of China’s fastest growing 
minority groups, the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs,  

saw their birth rate almost cut 
in half between 2017 and 2019,  

according to the government’s own numbers.

That sudden drop coincided with an 
intensified crackdown on the Uyghur people,

with mounting evidence indicating that many Uyghur 
women have been coerced into taking birth control

and subjected to forced sterilization. 
Which — and I’m no scientist or  

anything — doesn’t sound like it’ll help 
in the whole baby-making whatchamacallit.

Although few have experienced the same 
draconian measures as the Uyghurs,  

other Chinese minorities have been targeted, too,

including the Mongolians, who have 
had their language banned in schools,

as well as the Tibetans, whose 
children are increasingly getting  

sent to Mandarin-dominated boarding schools, 
while Tibetan educators are disappearing.

And measures that weaken children’s ties to 
their parents’ culture don’t sound like a  

strategy you use if you want people to have more 
kids. That’s about as effective an aphrodisiac as  

the movie Teeth corner box. If you know, you know… 
and you haven’t been the same since you’ve known.

It’s become more difficult for us to know 
the effect of such policies, however, as the  

authorities have stopped publishing statistics 
on the birth rates of separate non-Han groups.

For…some reason.

But there are clearly a lot of signs that the 
Chinese leadership are looking to restrict  

minorities rather than tap into China’s ethnic 
mosaic to alleviate the depopulation issue.

That’s not really a shock, as Xi is less the 
poster boy for minority empowerment and more  

the kind of guy that stresses Chinese 
uniformity under the rule of the CCP. 

But such posturing risks dealing a 
heavy blow to China’s national birth  

rate at a time when it’s already in free fall.  

And with the current generation of young 
Chinese people being small already as a  

consequence of the one-child policy, 
it’s unlikely that there are enough  

unemployed youths in the cities to 
revitalize the countryside and plug  

all the expanding population 
gaps in the border regions –  

unless robot college graduates count.

So, despite the Chinese government’s 
desperate attempts to lift the birthrate,  

the leadership seems to be willing 
to sacrifice population growth at  

the altar of ethnic dominance for the Han Chinese.

I guess at least, as China approaches zero 
births, the CCP is trying to make sure that  

all of China across ethnic groups is 
heading towards dystopia together.

While that certainly sounds grand, 
it’s less “Grandpa Xi” grand

and more “Grandstanding Xi” grand. 

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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.