'We are the last generation': China's harsh lockdowns could exacerbate population crisis
Hong Kong (CNN)- For generations of Chinese parents, the success of their children has long been one of their most important goals in life -- and they are known to be willing to make great sacrifices for it.
2022-05-16 20:06:58 - VI News Staff
And so when a Shanghai family refused to be taken from their home into government quarantine during the city's sixth week of lockdown, a police officer warned them with what he thought would be a powerful threat to bring them to heel -- their children's future.
"If you don't obey the orders from the city government, you will be punished, and the punishment will affect three generations in your family," the hazmat-suited police officer said, pointing his finger at the camera in a video posted on Chinese social media.
"We are the last generation, thank you," a young man, who is not seen in the video, replied adamantly, in an apparent suggestion he is not planning to have any kids.
The video ended there, with no indication of whether the family was eventually taken away. But it spread like wildfire on China's internet, resonating with many young Chinese who are fed up with the increasing pressure on them to have children -- from a society and government that many say has provided them with little of the material and emotional security they need to raise a child.
"I laughed at first but in the end I felt a sense of great sadness. He is resisting by giving up his reproductive rights," said a user on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform.
Carrying on the family line has long been a filial duty in traditional Chinese culture. But in today's China, not having children -- or delaying it -- has become a form of soft resistance and silent protest against what many see as the disappointing reality they live in, with deep-rooted structural problems stemming from a system that they have little power to change.
"It is a tragic expression of despair of the deepest kind," Zhang Xuezhong, a human rights lawyer and former law professor in Shanghai, wrote on Twitter about the video.
"We've been robbed of a future that is worth looking forward to. It is arguably the strongest denunciation a young man can make of the era he lives in."
Over the past decade, an increasing number of Chinese millennials have delayed -- or outright rejected -- marriage and childbirth, as they confront high work pressure, skyrocketing property prices, rising education costs and discrimination against mothers in the workplace.
Last year, just 7.6 million Chinese couples registered for marriage -- a 44% drop from 2013 and the lowest in 36 years. At the same time, the country's birthrate dropped to 7.5 births per 1,000 people, a record low since the founding of Communist China, with nine provinces and regions registering negative population growth.
The Chinese government is worried. For decades, it had strictly enforced a one-child policy that forced millions of women to abort pregnancies deemed illegal by the state. But as China's birthrate plummeted, demographers warned of a looming population crisis.
Beijing scrapped the one-child policy in 2016 and relaxed it further last year to allow couples to have three children, with local governments churning out a flurry of propaganda slogans and financial incentives to encourage more births -- but the birthrate has continued to nosedive.
Some officials and policy advisers have appeared tone-deaf to young people's demands. Last month, a law professor and delegate to the Jinzhou municipal People's Congress in Hubei province suggested that in order to promote marriage and childbirth, the media should reduce or avoid reporting on "independent women" and the "double-income-no-kids (DINK) lifestyle," because they are not in line with the country's "mainstream values." The suggestion drew a backlash online.
As the pandemic drags on, the sense of disenchantment among many of the country's younger generation has only grown.