Has the one-child policy restricted China’s growth in the long-term?

‘In attempting to tinker with its own demographics from the top down, the CCP may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and hamstrung their own economic future and growth.’

In 1979, China reversed Mao’s policy of encouraging high birth rates and introduced the one-child policy. Driven by a fear of overpopulation and the idea that a falling birth rate would allow the productive proportion of the population to grow faster than the population at large, this policy aimed at stimulating economic growth. As lower birth rates began to coincide with a Chinese economic boom, this theory seemed to the CCP to hold some weight. 

However as the birth rate began to fall more and more under the replacement level a policy that once seemed to have solved all of China’s problems created a new, much larger one. As the population aged and the factories of the CCP began to have less and less cheap labour, growth began to slow, and as it did the increase in retirees began to increase. The start of a Chinese population crisis was beginning, hidden at first by massive infrastructure spending. 

The Chinese economic miracle was powered most fundamentally by forign investment and a young, numerous and inexpensive workforce- a workforce that is now gone. China can in the future no longer spend its money on roads, bridges and railways; now it must spend them on pensions and the services its rapidly aging population needs. 

To add further to its population woes China has 30 million surplus men, who no matter how hard they try will never find wives. Without children of their own they will rely completely on the state for support once they hit retirement and will suffer a severe detriment to their mental health due to crippling loneliness. Combine this with one of the worst economic downturns in history and an ongoing trade war with America and the future of the workshop of the world does not now look nearly so rosy. 

This problem is made worse by the lack of immigration to China, and most importantly the speed at which this demographic change has come about. People in China now are living far longer with less money and the breathtaking speed in which this demographic shift has taken place leaves China and its services completely unprepared for the aging population it now has. 

Of course the effects of the breakdown of the traditional Chinese family structure is unknown, but it will certainly mean the older generation of Chinese will find themselves increasingly abandoned and lonely. Single children also will now face enormous pressure to support their parents at a time when real incomes in China are still low in comparison to its western competitors. In effect, in attempting to tinker with its own demographics from the top down, the CCP may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and hamstrung their own economic future and growth.