(TibetanReview.net, Mar24’24) —Hospitals across China are closing their obstetric departments due to lack of patients as the country of 1.4 billion people suffered a population decline for two consecutive years despite government efforts to stem the falling tide both with offering of various types of incentives and exhortations of giving birth as a patriotic duty. The country is staring at the prospect of becoming old before it could become rich, with its hope of overtaking the United States as the world’s biggest economy becoming a distant dream.
The closure of delivery wards has been likened to an “obstetric winter” in China, while public concern around the shutdowns has prompted authorities to remove search topics related to the issue from Chinese social media, said aljazeera.com Mar 24.
But the silencing of public concern has not stopped hospitals from closing their delivery wards, the report noted.
The report said the prospect of rekindling population growth in China appeared bleak as the country’s economy was struggling and as young people eschewed traditional marriages and having children.
The birth-rate in China has been falling since the imposition of a strict one-child policy for families in 1980 amid fears of a rapidly rising population. When this coercive measure proved too successful, the government changed course in 2015, allowing couples to have two children, then three in 2021. But the sharp decline in birth-rate continued.
While China has not published official figures on the reported closures of obstetric departments in many hospitals, Reuters news agency reported this week that “many hospitals in China” had stopped offering obstetric services this year.
The report noted that data from China’s National Health Commission show that between 2020 and 2021, the number of maternity hospitals fell from 807 to 793.
The aljazeera.com report said that in Sep 2023, The Paper – a state-run digital media organisation based in Shanghai – published a lengthy report on the closure of obstetric departments, including in Zhejiang province’s Ningbo and Wenzhou cities, Jiangsu province, the Guangxi region, and Guangzhou city in Guangdong Province.
In an opinion piece published by China Business News in Feb 2024, Professor Deng Yong of the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, and Wang Chongyu, also of the same university, were stated to have warned against the “rapid abolition” of paediatric and gynaecological departments in China.
They have cited media reports as saying obstetrics departments across the country were experiencing a ‘cold winter’ and the number of new-borns continued to decrease.
“Although the abolition of paediatric hospitals and maternal and child hospitals seems to have become a general trend, their rapid abolition will affect the supply of basic medical care for citizens, increase the strain on hospital resources, and trigger a series of social problems,” they have continued.
The falling birth-rate has been seen to be in keeping with declining marriages in the country. It fell from approximately 13.5 million annually in 2013 to approximately 6.8 million in 2022, said the aljazeera.com report.
Besides, data was cited to indicate that Chinese people were also getting married later, divorce rates were rising, and the number of people choosing to remain single was growing.
“Now is not a good time to have a kid. The economy is not good, and a lot of young people are struggling and have other priorities,” Agnes Chen, 34, a business owner in Shanghai, has said. “Even the couples I know that want to have a kid are waiting for better times instead.”
“We would have to work a lot more to provide for a baby, and we don’t want more stress and pressure right now. Life is not just about starting a family, quality of life is also important,” Lisa Ming, 28, a nurse anaesthetist in Shenzhen who married last year, has said.
“So, for now, we just have a cat.”