China's rural hollowing-out trend is now a foregone conclusion
China's “great power with empty nests” is now a foregone conclusion!——The Spring Festival has already become a hurried passerby in my rural hometown
After many years, I returned to my rural hometown in Zhoukou, Henan, China, during the Spring Festival. I do not know whether it is because I have seen too many new buildings in the big city, but the village felt very dilapidated. Some newly built buildings seemed to show that the countryside still had some vitality, but this was only on the surface——to use my joking phrase, the rural home is a “resort” for about two weeks a year.
The decline of rural China is already irreversible
Back at home, thorns grew everywhere, as if I had arrived in a wild field. This situation, of course, was not unique to my family; there were many households like this in our village. The uncle next door said that this whole area of our family had become empty in a connected stretch. In ordinary times, whole stretches of houses had no one living in them, and people only came home once during the Spring Festival, while some simply did not come home for several years.
Our village is right next to a river. In the past, the riverside by the village was once the liveliest place; at that time, people would even carry their bowls there when eating lunch and afternoon meals. When I went again to the riverbank that had been the liveliest place five years earlier, I was very surprised that thorns also grew everywhere there. How had it become like this? At that time, the place had been trampled by our feet until almost no grass grew, and it was very smooth, so I never expected that after a few years it would be like this.
On reflection, there is actually no need to be surprised. Basically everyone who can work has gone out to work, there are fewer and fewer children, and some children simply went with their parents to other places, while the remaining elderly people have a very small range of activity, so who could still make this place lively? Walking along the riverbank, these footprints are very clear, because the land has become very soft when no one is on it. These footprints are clearly new, that is, everyone came back during the Spring Festival and walked here once.
Looking at the river by the village, I do not know whether it is more beautiful or more desolate. It used to be all cultivated river land, but now, in the high places, almost all of it is planted with poplars; in the low places, river grass is dense, and in some places natural reed beds have already formed. This is not the result of the state encouraging the return of farmland to forest and grassland; it is all because people went out to work in other places. But planting trees on all the good land by the river and beside the village is a bit of pointless trouble——on one hand complaining about insufficient arable land, and on the other hand planting good land with trees, and even leaving arable land idle in some places (as is relatively common in southern places).
Today's countryside is becoming emptier and emptier, and there are fewer and fewer children. For example, the uncle next door to me is already 64 years old and still goes out to work. The old men in our village even joke, “Why aren't you, a young man, going out?” (he is already a 64-year-old old man). One of my uncles by marriage is already 68 years old, a standard old man, and still goes to construction sites in other places to work. It is not because of a lack of money, but because he cannot find anyone to spend time with at home. He told me that in their village, basically everyone who can go out has gone out to work, and in ordinary times he cannot find anyone in the village to spend time with. Watching TV at home made his eyes blurry, so he was “forced” to do construction work together with people from the same village.
Apart from the Spring Festival, what remains in the ordinary countryside is basically old men and old women, women who have not gone out, and children who have not been taken away. In ordinary times, whole stretches of houses are empty, and the large mechanical negative growth of population and the coming natural negative growth of population mean that a great decline in rural China, at least in rural areas of backward regions, is already unavoidable.
China's “great power with empty nests” has already become an established trend
How could it be only our countryside that declines? China's cities cannot escape it either. The “empty nests” of the countryside are only the precursor to China's “great empty nest,” and an even more intense population crisis is still ahead.
My father once wanted to return home after getting old to do business, and I advised him to stay in Zhejiang for the most part. Is there still any hope of doing business in rural areas like ours? Apart from a brief burst of activity during the Spring Festival, it is empty in ordinary times, so whose business would you do? Young people with spending power have all left, and the old men and old women who remain either have no money or do not dare to spend money. Would you rely on old men and old women buying salt to do business? The person running the small shop in our village said that business in ordinary times is already very poor. Apart from large-scale contracting of land in rural areas to grow cash crops, large-scale breeding, and opening factories in county towns or good towns, rural areas like ours no longer have much hope for development.
The uncle next door said that in another thirty years, our village might no longer exist. When I heard this, I was very surprised. But on careful thought, it is indeed so. Urbanization has been advancing all along, China's fertility rate has already fallen to the super-dangerous level of about 1.2, and future cities will certainly extract young rural people at double the rate, otherwise they will be hard pressed to sustain themselves. By that time, our village really might disappear in 2045.
Now the old and the young in the countryside all go to the cities to work, sustaining the vitality of the cities. For example, Shanghai has already had negative natural population growth for 23 consecutive years. If there were no young people from elsewhere, Shanghai would already have become an aging city. But this good situation will not last long either. The ultra-low fertility rate of cities will continue, and the rural fertility rate will also keep declining (rural young people in cities mostly have no housing, low incomes, and high pressure, so the fertility rate will certainly not be high either). The rural people who go to the cities to work will also gradually grow old, and the vitality of China's cities will also gradually fade away.
China's current total fertility rate of 1.2 will reduce the future population, or rather the working-age population, by 45% about every 30 years. How long can the method of using rural labor to subsidize the cities be maintained? The “great power with empty nests” has already become an established trend. In the whole future of China, just like today's countryside, with the large-scale reduction of the working-age population, a great decline is already unavoidable, and it is a collapse along the way that is difficult to reverse.
China's average life expectancy rose from 35 years in 1949 to 75 years now. The extension of lifespan and reduction of mortality alone could increase the population from 550 million to more than 1.2 billion. It can be said that in the past 65 years, 80% of China's population growth has been due to longer lifespan and lower mortality. Since 1991, when China's total fertility rate fell below the replacement level, population growth has been entirely due to longer lifespan.
For example, in a “421” family, 4 give birth to 2, and 2 give birth to 1. With average life expectancy doubled, the family can grow from 4 people to 7 people. But as the grandparents' generation dies, 4 people are suddenly reduced, and the population decreases by more than half. After 30 years, that is, around 2045, China's second baby boom population will enter the age of death, with more than 20 million deaths per year, but at that time the annual number of births will be only more than 6 million, a reduction of more than 10 million a year, and a reduction of 100 million in a few years. China's population will then completely collapse.
After 30 years, perhaps our village really will no longer exist, first because of urbanization, second because of the ultra-low fertility rate, and third because cities under the ultra-low fertility rate will severely extract rural population. By then, we will only be able to “pay respects” to our village during Qingming or the Spring Festival.
The new countryside should not engage in “pointless trouble”
When only the old, the young, the sick, and the disabled are left, what new countryside can still be built? I worry like this, but my cousin's wife told me that we are preparing to build a new countryside here, and that new houses at the west end of the village are no longer allowed to be built.
What new countryside is to be built? It means tearing down the current houses, including newly built buildings, and then building high-rises around the town, with everyone living in high-rises. This is the new countryside we are preparing to build here. Is this not “driving farmers upstairs”? It turns out that the new countryside here is actually this kind of pointless trouble.
Tear down the new houses, subsidize farmers with a portion, and then let farmers go to the town to buy new buildings. Farmers spend more money, the government spends more money, and for most farmers it is only a place to stay once a year when they come back. Is it necessary to make such pointless trouble?
Building high-rises around the town and on both sides of the roads will inevitably occupy new arable land. Although building high-rises and moving the village out can free up quite a lot of arable land, such arable land is of very poor quality and costs a great deal, and at least in the first few years it is very difficult to farm. In many rural areas, large amounts of arable land are abandoned or semi-abandoned (for example, changing from two or three cropping seasons a year to one), good arable land is returned to forest and grassland, and agricultural technology continues to develop (with yields increasing). Under such circumstances, is it necessary to carry out this extremely uneconomical shuffling around?
Oh, stop making pointless trouble with the “new countryside.” Do not make me unable to find my own village so quickly.