China is historically famous for its high demographic dividend and its huge working population, and this has driven tremendous economic growth over the past few decades. However, that population has begun to shrink and the Lewis turning point whereby surplus rural population has been absorbed into manufacturing is also approaching, leading to great change in the Chinese labor market. Will this negatively affect China’s economic growth? Can the "Middle-Income Trap" be avoided? What reforms should be made on the labor supply side? This book tackles these key questions. This book is a collection of 14 papers presenting the author’s observations, analysis, and opinions of China’s long-term economic development from the demographic perspective, while analysing real economic problems from the past and including policy recommendations. It provides a critical reference for scholars and students interested in Chinese economic development and demographic perspectives on economic development.

This book examines the profound demographic transformation affecting China, India, and Indonesia, where 40% of the world's people live. It offers a systematic, comparative approach that will help readers to better understand the changing social and regional recomposition of the population in these regions. The chapters present a detailed investigation and mapping of regional trends in mortality, fertility, migration and urbanization, education, and aging. Throughout, the analysis carefully considers how these trends affect economic and social development. Coverage also raises global, theoretical questions about the singular ways in which each of these three countries have achieved their demographic transition. As the authors reveal, demographic trends seem to be somewhat linear and anticipatable, providing Asia’s three demographic giants and their governments a formidable advantage in planning for the future. But the evolution of human mobility in China, India, and Indonesia, closely intertwined as it is with changing economic conditions, appears less predictable and ranks high among the major challenges to demographic knowledge in the coming decades. Offering an insightful look into the components, implications, and regional variations of a changing population, this book will appeal to social scientists, demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, epidemiologists, and specialists in Asian studies.

China has grown rapidly since the reform initiation of the 1970s. China’s Economic Growth Prospects narrates the contribution of demographic transition to recent economic growth in China, and provides suggestions for ways in which it can sustain growth over the next few decades. The expert author provides reasons for the economic slowdown since the second decade of the twenty-first century; explores the challenges facing China’s long-term sustainability of growth with the disappearance of demographic dividend; and proposes policy suggestions. He concludes that, in order to avoid the middle-income trap, economic growth in China must transform from an inputs-driven pattern, to a productivity-driven pattern. Academics, researchers and students of economics and business, particularly those specialising in China, will find this book to be a useful resource. Investment bankers, journalists, politicians and policy makers will find the discussions of past experience and the future potential of the Chinese economy to be of interest.

Student~ interested in world populations and demography inevitably need to know China. As the most populous country of the world, China occupies a unique position in the world population system. How its population is shaped by the intricate interplays among factors such as its political ideology and institutions, economic reality, government policies, sociocultural traditions, and ethnic divergence represents at once a fascinating and challenging arena for investigatIon and analysis. Yet, for much of the 20th century, while population studies have developed into a mature science, precise information and sophisticated analysis about the Chinese population had largely remained either lacking or inaccessible, first because of the absence of systematic databases due to almost uninterrupted strife and wars, and later because the society was closed to the outside observers for about three decades since 1949. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, things have dramatically changed. China has embarked on an ambitious reform program where modernization became the utmost goal of societal mobilization. China could no longer afford to rely on imprecise census or survey information for population-related studies and policy planning, nor to remaining closed to the outside world. Both the gathering of more precise information and access to such information have dramatically increased in the 1980s. Systematic observations, analyses and reporting about the Chinese population have surfaced in the population literature around the globe.

“An important and much-needed introduction to this rich and fast-growing field. Hershatter has handled a daunting task with aplomb.” —Susan L. Glosser, author of Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953

As the most populous country in the world, China’s demographic challenges have always been too many people for ecological system, resources, and the environment. However, by the early 1990s, fertility rate in China had dropped below the replacement level, and China’s low fertility has now attracted the world’s attention. This book is among the first studies to raise and examine questions on low fertility in China, believing that China has entered a new era featured by low birth rate and ageing population. Utilizing advanced research methods and models on low fertility to analyze China’s census data, this book explores the issues from various perspectives. Methodologies employed in past population studies, policy making concerning fertility rate, underreporting of births and fertility rate estimates, fertility level of the migrant population, current population pattern, long-term population trends, population dynamics, and many other thought-provoking problems are covered. Finally, the book revisits China’s population issues in the context of globalization. The 21st century has seen the new challenge of persistent population decrease and ageing worldwide, which, along with economic globalization, demands a new understanding of the changes in population pattern and their consequences. Researchers and students in China’s demographic and social studies will be attracted by the insightful analysis and rich materials provided in the book. Population policy makers will also benefit from it.

This book examines Chinese workers' experiences and shows how disenchantment with the legal system drives workers from the courtroom to the streets.

In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. With China’s urban population projected to rise to about one billion – or close to 70 percent of the country’s population – by 2030, China’s leaders are seeking a more coordinated urbanization process. Urban China is a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council which was established to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in China and to help China forge a new model of urbanization. The report takes as its point of departure the conviction that China's urbanization can become more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. However, it stresses that achieving this vision will require strong support from both government and the markets for policy reforms in a number of area. The report proposes six main areas for reform: first, amending land management institutions to foster more efficient land use, denser cities, modernized agriculture, and more equitable wealth distribution; second, adjusting the hukou household registration system to increase labor mobility and provide urban migrant workers equal access to a common standard of public services; third, placing urban finances on a more sustainable footing while fostering financial discipline among local governments; fourth, improving urban planning to enhance connectivity and encourage scale and agglomeration economies; fifth, reducing environmental pressures through more efficient resource management; and sixth, improving governance at the local level.

This original and panoramic book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalisation will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality. “Whatever the future holds”, the authors argue, “it will be nothing like the past”. Deflationary headwinds over the last three decades have been primarily due to an enormous surge in the world’s available labour supply, owing to very favourable demographic trends and the entry of China and Eastern Europe into the world’s trading system. This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation. The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls. Covering many social and political factors, as well as those that are more purely macroeconomic, the authors address topics including ageing, dementia, inequality, populism, retirement and debt finance, among others. This book will be of interest and understandable to anyone with an interest on where the world’s economy may be going.

'Governing China's Population' tells the story of political and cultural shifts, from the perspectives of both regime and society.