China Speakers Bureau: Imbalance, not overpopulation is our problem

Aging, one of China's problems

Even China's mostly optimistic People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, admits the country has a problem with its demographics, after the results of the latest census appeared. Huge imbalances are China's largest problem, tells Zhang Juwei in MSNBC, no longer overpopulation.

“China doesn’t have overpopulation pressure,” said Zhang Juwei, the deputy chief of the Population and Labor Economics Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “A structural imbalance is the real problem we’re facing.”
By that, Zhang means a whole host of problems that the one-child policy has engendered.

Image by Fantake via Flickr

Zhang Juwei

Key findings of the new census confirmed Zhang’s points, even prompting the official Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, to say “a crisis looms” and giving rise to a catchphrase found in much of the Western media coverage, that “China will grow older before it gets richer.”