Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-03-19
China must open its doors to up to 100 million young immigrants from Africa and Southeast Asia to address the country's aging workforce, according to a researcher with China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).
Migrant workers at a construction site in Beijing, Dec. 9, 2014. (Photo/CFP) |
China must open its doors to up to 100 million young immigrants from Africa and Southeast Asia to address the country's aging workforce, according to a researcher with China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).
China's
rapidly aging population, a product of the country's one-child policy, has
become one of the government's biggest headaches. While Beijing has eased the
national birth control policy in recent years, economic constraints have so far
prevented a new baby boom.
The Chinese
tradition of preferring boys to girls has also led to a gross gender imbalance
in the population, with estimates that 30 million Chinese men will not be able
to find a female partner by 2020.
Based on
the sixth National Population Census in 2010, only 16.6% of the country's
population was aged 0-14, less than half of the statistic in 1982. Research by
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that before 2020, China's working
population will fall by 1.55 million people per year. From 2020 to 2030, the
working population will drop by 7.9 million people a year, eventually leading
to a total decrease of 250 million workers by 2050.
Luo
Tianhao, a researcher for the SASAC's Business Technology Assessment Center,
says China's over-60s will account for 30% of the entire population by 2050,
resulting in a significant shrinkage of youth labor that will have a
devastating impact on the economy.
Luo says he
has also additional concerns that the actual size of China's workforce has
already been overstated, having once read a report stating that there are at
least several tens of millions of middle-aged people in China unwilling to work
or find employment.
Accordingly,
Luo says that over the next 20 years, the government must decisively promote
having children and "tolerate" mass immigration of up to 100 million
people from African and Southeast Asian countries. Beijing has no choice but to
choose this path, Luo said, adding that this would make China the country with
the second-most immigrants in the world behind the United States.
The purpose
of such an approach is utilize the young resources of those countries to
effectively feed China's seniors, Luo said, noting that he does not believe
young Chinese people will be disadvantaged from the policy because of the
country's high university enrollment rate.
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