It has long been disputed whether China systematically exports its authoritarian development model. Now, there are clear examples that prove that this is indeed happening.
On the occasion of the current Tanzania visit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Marcel Grzanna reports about a school for party officials from Eastern and Southern Africa. A sneak peek of what is being taught there: The party should always be above the judiciary and parliament and not tolerate competition.
France pursues a daring industrial policy against Chinese EVs at the national level. In the future, the French purchase subsidy will only be granted if the product scores enough eco-points – and a long import route will cost a lot of points.
Although German cars do not have this problem, France creates another hurdle: Only smaller cars are eligible for social leasing, i.e., car leasing granted by the government to lower-income households. And Germany does not have many of these on offer. Of course, France can decide who gets treated to French taxpayers’ money. And that ultimately tends to be Citroën and Renault.
China, the world’s leading exporter, is under suspicion of offering not only goods, services and technologies, but also its authoritarian governance system. Just as the USA encouraged the global spread of democracy, especially in the 20th century, Beijing, in turn, aims to make autocratic government palatable to the world.
But so far, there has been no hard evidence to prove this assumption. Especially since Beijing refuses to be accused of trying to impose its system on other countries. Interference in the internal affairs of other states is taboo. After all, China slaps the wrist of anyone who interferes in matters that China considers domestic.
However, this narrative starts showing cracks. A joint investigation by the online medium Axios and the Danish newspaper Politiken suggests that the Communist Party is quite interested in autocratic structures in countries where it represents economic or geostrategic interests. In the focus: Africa.
At the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania, Chinese experts from Beijing educate African leaders. The curriculum includes, for example, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s concept of “poverty alleviation” or Chinese climate policy. It is hard to find anything wrong with that.
However, according to the investigative report, the Chinese guests are also supposed to teach students from six countries about classic forms of authoritarian government. After numerous conversations with participants and local school experts, it turned out that the lecturers strongly recommend in class that a ruling party should be above the state and its courts. Another tip given by the autocracy ambassadors is to maintain strict discipline within the party to ensure compliance with the ideology.
The school, which opened in 2022, is primarily for officials of six self-proclaimed liberation parties:
All six parties have been democratically elected to lead the government in their countries and have governed for many years.
The school explicitly trains only young members of the governing parties. The oppositions are excluded. To political scientist Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, this is a clear case of interference in the internal affairs of other nations. “If you are upholding one political party and not offering [support] to the whole political system, you’re offering to strengthen one party within a country, you’re nurturing authoritarianism,” says Brady.
The school was financed with Chinese money. The flags of the six parties fly on the campus, with China’s national flag at their center. At the groundbreaking ceremony in 2018, Xi Jinping extended a congratulatory message to the six parties, whom he saw as important forces in Southern Africa “to lead national liberation and economic construction in their respective countries.”
The belief that China seeks to export authoritarianism is not yet too widespread among researchers. However, Daniel Mattingly of Yale University, whose research focuses on authoritarian politics in China, finds it “remarkable” that graduates leave the school realizing that they need to move to a much stronger one-party state model.
The democratic backsliding would be advantageous for China because the economic interests of the People’s Republic would be easier to enforce after such an upheaval. After all, the participation of the opposition and civil society complicates the processes for the Chinese government. Autocracies are quick and happy to create facts, which usually also serve the interests of the ruling caste.
The school in Tanzania is not the only channel China’s party-state uses to send its messages to African leaders. For example, representatives of Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party attended ideological training by the CCP in the province of Shandong back in May 2019 to study the relationship between the party and the government. “If we talk about the supremacy of the party against [the] government what powers should the party have?” was a question raised by party leader Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri at the time.
In September 2021, ZANU-PF opened its own ideological training school for party cadres and civil servants. Opponents of ZANU-PF accuse President Emmerson Mnangagwa of attempting to copy the Chinese system.
China has also put out feelers to the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2020, the CCP hosted a virtual training for about 50 mid- to senior-level officials of the Congolese Party of Labour. The core subject at the time was how the ruling party could play a leading role in social and economic construction.
“Despite its undemocratic nature, the CCP is actively promoting its Party-state model in the Global South as the ideal way to rapidly modernize and ensure political stability,” authoritarianism expert Benjamin R. Young of the School of Government and Public Affairs in Virginia told the Japanese newspaper Nikkei.
This is no big surprise for Young. The CCP Central Committee’s International Liaison Department has been working for years to establish and maintain relations with foreign political parties, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa. “Xi Jinping has reprioritized this CCP-based outreach as a cornerstone of garnering support for China’s growing influence in and around the Global South,” Young said.
In the context of interparty cooperation, Beijing exports its principles of centralization and autocratic one-party rule to developing countries. At Tanzania’s Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, there are even six developing countries.
France plans to deliberately disadvantage Chinese manufacturers when subsidizing EVs. While most European countries subsidize the purchase of EVs irrespective of additional environmental criteria, the government in Paris will add other criteria:
To this end, the “Bonus écologique,” the French environmental premium, has been revised. “We will stop subsidizing electric vehicles with a bad carbon footprint,” emphasized French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire at the presentation of the measures in September 2023. “French taxpayers’ money should not be used to finance vehicles 70 percent of which come from China,” Le Maire stated with conviction.
To be eligible for the environmental bonus, EVs must score a minimum number of environmental points starting in 2024. These are determined by the greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain, i.e., the carbon footprint of the materials used, as well as the emissions during production and shipping of a car. Only a “score environmental” of 60 out of 100 possible points qualifies for the environmental bonus of up to 7,000 euros.
Above all, two criteria of the revised environmental bonus are expected to exclude Chinese-manufactured EVs from the subsidy. Firstly, the carbon emission factor of the energy mix in the country of origin is considered in the rating. China scores very poorly here because it generates much of its electricity from coal. Added to this are the carbon emissions generated during shipping from production to the distribution site in France.
The French energy agency ADEME is responsible for calculating the environmental points. Car manufacturers must submit all relevant data to ADEME as of October 2023. A list of the EVs that will still be eligible for subsidies will be published on 15 December 2023.
It is already known that they must not only meet the new criteria for the environmental bonus. Their price cannot exceed 47,000 euros and their weight must not exceed 2.4 tons. This means German-made models such as Volkswagen’s ID.3 or the 2024 Mini Countryman E should have a good chance.
Germany’s IG Metall trade union, which has traditionally enjoyed a strong position in the German automotive industry, believes the French government’s approach is appropriate. “The carbon footprint of production, energy mix and transport should be taken into account both in the carbon pricing of imports and in the design of subsidies and instruments,” it told Table.Media. It is no anti-China tariff, but a carbon-oriented subsidy system that promotes the development of regional and local value chains.
The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) believes the new French regulations go too far. While promoting the switch to alternative drive systems makes sense in principle, the same conditions must apply to all, said a VDA spokeswoman. “Protectionism is not the right way. Europe must stand for the value of international, free and fair trade and open markets.” But Juergen Matthes, Head of International Economic Policy, Financial and Real Estate Markets at the German Economic Institute (IW), is no longer sure about that. Upon a question from Table.Medias, he said that typically such an approach “would be branded as sheer protectionism.”
But it’s not that simple because the other big players don’t play by the rules either. “The United States promotes EVs with similar regulations. And China has also heavily subsidized the production side of EVs,” Matthes said.
The EU Commission now also sees China’s subsidies as a problem. According to its calculations, Chinese EV imports are sold on average 20 percent below the price of European cars in the EU. Their market share could increase from 8 to 15 percent in the next few years.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attributes this to unfair practices. “Their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies. This is distorting our market,” she criticized in mid-September before the EU Parliament in Strasbourg.
Consequently, the Commission initiated a formal anti-subsidy proceeding against China on 4 October 2023. The declared aim is to protect companies producing in the EU. “Wherever we find evidence that they are being hampered by market distortions and unfair competition, we will act decisively,” von der Leyen stressed.
While France has lobbied extensively for this step, Germany has been rather reluctant for fear of countermeasures. Moreover, it is currently unclear to what extent non-Chinese car manufacturers such as BMW or VW, which manufacture EVs in China for the global market, benefit from such Chinese subsidies.
In addition to the environmental bonus, a second subsidy instrument will also exclude vehicles manufactured in China in the future. Only vehicles manufactured in the EU are explicitly eligible for the newly created “social leasing” scheme. The aim of social leasing is the democratization of electromobility, something that has been much discussed in France.
It is intended to enable households with an annual income of less than 20,850 euros to lease a new EV for 100 euros a month. This is one of President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign promises from last year.
For 2024, the government anticipates approximately 20,000 social leasing contracts. In the following years, the number of subsidized lease cars is set to increase to 100,000 per year. A budget of 50 million euros has been earmarked for this. With this funding, the French government covers the initial down payment. However, this down payment must not exceed 16 percent of the vehicle price or 5,000 euros. This is why small, fuel-efficient vehicles are the primary beneficiaries of the program. The Citroën ë-C3, the Renault Twingo E-Tech and the Fiat 500e are some of the vehicles under consideration.
The subsidy regulations will be published in November. The application process will also start then. As with the environmental bonus, a list of eligible models is expected in mid-December.
It is unlikely that a German EV will qualify for social leasing after VW announced the end of the e-Up a few weeks ago. Instead, high-margin SUVs and luxury cars dominate the product range of German carmakers.
IG Metall sees this as a mistake. From their perspective, “there needs to be a quick addition to the model policy toward affordable vehicles.” IG Metall believes this will determine the future viability and market position of companies.
Sinolytics is a European research-based consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
With China’s fertility rate having fallen off a cliff, many experts have offered a variety of advice for addressing the problem. But all of the proposals lack an essential component: a critical perspective on the role of gender.
Because the focus has been on the impact of high childrearing costs on fertility, the career penalty that women incur when they have a child has largely been overlooked. China’s policymakers would benefit greatly from the work of the Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin, who won the Nobel Prize for economics this year for her research advancing “our understanding of women’s labor-market outcomes.”
What does a gender-critical economics perspective suggest about China’s falling fertility rate? For starters, the growing literature on women’s labor-market outcomes shows that bearing a child can have significant negative effects on future employment prospects and salary.
This “parenthood penalty” is usually better understood to be a “motherhood penalty,” since it falls almost exclusively on women. The data make clear that women with children work and earn less than women without children, with some economists putting the parenthood penalty at around 20 percent of income.
Taking that figure as a benchmark, economists Yaohui Zhao, Xiaobo Zhang, and I looked into the lifetime income losses associated with childbirth in China, and found that they total to around 78,000 US dollars. Previously, the YuWa Population Research Institute examined the costs of childbearing in China – from rising formula prices and housing rents to education-related expenses – and estimated that the bill from birth to age 18 comes to around 66,000 US dollars. That is 6.9 times China’s per capita GDP, a ratio much higher than what one finds in the United States, France, or Germany.
But this figure accounts only for direct costs. When we add the parenthood penalty, the average total cost of raising a child in China could be as high as 144,000 US dollars. While it may be around 84,000 US dollars in rural areas, it can be more than 300,000 US dollars in urban centers such as Beijing and Shanghai.
And these are just the quantifiable monetary costs. There are additional risks, such as those stemming from rising divorce rates and poorly regulated processes for assigning custody of children. When Jing Zhang of the Beijing Lawyers Association examined more than 700 cases involving custody rights, she found that children were forcibly separated or hidden from a parent – mostly by fathers – 13 percent of the time.
Since China’s rising divorce rate is a new phenomenon, laws and enforcement in this domain leave much to be desired. Cases of parents, often mothers with legal custody rights but deprived of access to their children, are not unusual.
As in most countries, Chinese working women also bear an unfair and disproportional burden when it comes to family care and household work. According to the World Bank, female labor-force participation in China is now 61.1 percent (much higher than global average of 50), yet women do 2.6 times more unpaid domestic and care work than men.
It is no wonder that modern Chinese women are reluctant to have children. Like the working American women whom Goldin studies, Chinese women today are very different from their mothers and grandmothers. This is a generation that grew up with the one-child policy and the expansion of college enrollment for women starting in 1999. They have had far better educational opportunities, and they have benefited from the legacy of “reform and opening-up” and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Having made educational, professional, and social gains that previous generations scarcely could have imagined, many Chinese women will no longer settle for the traditional model of marriage according to which men are the breadwinners and the bosses of the household, and women the subordinate homemakers. They refuse to accept that being a mother should be their entire identity.
Yet now that China’s fertility rate remains stubbornly low, there is renewed social pressure on women to “behave responsibly” by resuming their former roles. Parents are also urging their daughters to get married and have children, lest they become “leftover women” (those still single after age 27). But this pressure is merely adding to the burden and agitation that many aspiring working women bear.
Faced with overwhelming demands, many women are doing the opposite of what they are told and refusing to get married. This makes perfect sense. As long as they are single, they cannot be pressured to have babies and perform the overwhelming double duty of full-time professional and homemaker.
This is modern Chinese women’s silent strike. Exhausted from working both at the office and at home, women need men to step up and share more household and childcare responsibilities, and they need better policy and legal frameworks to account for gender inequities.
The solution to falling fertility rates thus cannot be only material or monetary in nature. Subsidizing childcare or kindergarten services is important, but so is doing more to ensure gender equality. China’s policies and social values should respect and promote women’s and men’s freedom of choice in work and/or at home. They need to recognize that many women long for career success, and they should encourage and celebrate men who share household and childcare responsibilities.
China benefits from its extraordinary powers to achieve policy goals. If Chinese policymakers take additional steps with more gender perspectives, they can enjoy more sustainable and healthy fertility rates, and help women truly “hold up half the sky.”
Qian Liu is Managing Director of the Economist Group in Greater China.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.
www.project-syndicate.org
After five months in space, the three taikonauts Zhu Yangzhu, Gui Haichao and Jing Haipeng have returned to Earth. The return capsule of the Shenzhou 16 spacecraft, slowed down by a large parachute, landed on Tuesday in the Gobi Desert – more precisely, at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. State television broadcast the footage live. This marks the second crew change since the space station began operations earlier this year. China continues to push ahead with its space program and, like the United States, plans to send humans to the moon again. The People’s Republic’s first manned lunar mission is planned for 2030.
It has long been disputed whether China systematically exports its authoritarian development model. Now, there are clear examples that prove that this is indeed happening.
On the occasion of the current Tanzania visit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Marcel Grzanna reports about a school for party officials from Eastern and Southern Africa. A sneak peek of what is being taught there: The party should always be above the judiciary and parliament and not tolerate competition.
France pursues a daring industrial policy against Chinese EVs at the national level. In the future, the French purchase subsidy will only be granted if the product scores enough eco-points – and a long import route will cost a lot of points.
Although German cars do not have this problem, France creates another hurdle: Only smaller cars are eligible for social leasing, i.e., car leasing granted by the government to lower-income households. And Germany does not have many of these on offer. Of course, France can decide who gets treated to French taxpayers’ money. And that ultimately tends to be Citroën and Renault.
China, the world’s leading exporter, is under suspicion of offering not only goods, services and technologies, but also its authoritarian governance system. Just as the USA encouraged the global spread of democracy, especially in the 20th century, Beijing, in turn, aims to make autocratic government palatable to the world.
But so far, there has been no hard evidence to prove this assumption. Especially since Beijing refuses to be accused of trying to impose its system on other countries. Interference in the internal affairs of other states is taboo. After all, China slaps the wrist of anyone who interferes in matters that China considers domestic.
However, this narrative starts showing cracks. A joint investigation by the online medium Axios and the Danish newspaper Politiken suggests that the Communist Party is quite interested in autocratic structures in countries where it represents economic or geostrategic interests. In the focus: Africa.
At the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania, Chinese experts from Beijing educate African leaders. The curriculum includes, for example, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s concept of “poverty alleviation” or Chinese climate policy. It is hard to find anything wrong with that.
However, according to the investigative report, the Chinese guests are also supposed to teach students from six countries about classic forms of authoritarian government. After numerous conversations with participants and local school experts, it turned out that the lecturers strongly recommend in class that a ruling party should be above the state and its courts. Another tip given by the autocracy ambassadors is to maintain strict discipline within the party to ensure compliance with the ideology.
The school, which opened in 2022, is primarily for officials of six self-proclaimed liberation parties:
All six parties have been democratically elected to lead the government in their countries and have governed for many years.
The school explicitly trains only young members of the governing parties. The oppositions are excluded. To political scientist Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, this is a clear case of interference in the internal affairs of other nations. “If you are upholding one political party and not offering [support] to the whole political system, you’re offering to strengthen one party within a country, you’re nurturing authoritarianism,” says Brady.
The school was financed with Chinese money. The flags of the six parties fly on the campus, with China’s national flag at their center. At the groundbreaking ceremony in 2018, Xi Jinping extended a congratulatory message to the six parties, whom he saw as important forces in Southern Africa “to lead national liberation and economic construction in their respective countries.”
The belief that China seeks to export authoritarianism is not yet too widespread among researchers. However, Daniel Mattingly of Yale University, whose research focuses on authoritarian politics in China, finds it “remarkable” that graduates leave the school realizing that they need to move to a much stronger one-party state model.
The democratic backsliding would be advantageous for China because the economic interests of the People’s Republic would be easier to enforce after such an upheaval. After all, the participation of the opposition and civil society complicates the processes for the Chinese government. Autocracies are quick and happy to create facts, which usually also serve the interests of the ruling caste.
The school in Tanzania is not the only channel China’s party-state uses to send its messages to African leaders. For example, representatives of Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party attended ideological training by the CCP in the province of Shandong back in May 2019 to study the relationship between the party and the government. “If we talk about the supremacy of the party against [the] government what powers should the party have?” was a question raised by party leader Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri at the time.
In September 2021, ZANU-PF opened its own ideological training school for party cadres and civil servants. Opponents of ZANU-PF accuse President Emmerson Mnangagwa of attempting to copy the Chinese system.
China has also put out feelers to the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2020, the CCP hosted a virtual training for about 50 mid- to senior-level officials of the Congolese Party of Labour. The core subject at the time was how the ruling party could play a leading role in social and economic construction.
“Despite its undemocratic nature, the CCP is actively promoting its Party-state model in the Global South as the ideal way to rapidly modernize and ensure political stability,” authoritarianism expert Benjamin R. Young of the School of Government and Public Affairs in Virginia told the Japanese newspaper Nikkei.
This is no big surprise for Young. The CCP Central Committee’s International Liaison Department has been working for years to establish and maintain relations with foreign political parties, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa. “Xi Jinping has reprioritized this CCP-based outreach as a cornerstone of garnering support for China’s growing influence in and around the Global South,” Young said.
In the context of interparty cooperation, Beijing exports its principles of centralization and autocratic one-party rule to developing countries. At Tanzania’s Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, there are even six developing countries.
France plans to deliberately disadvantage Chinese manufacturers when subsidizing EVs. While most European countries subsidize the purchase of EVs irrespective of additional environmental criteria, the government in Paris will add other criteria:
To this end, the “Bonus écologique,” the French environmental premium, has been revised. “We will stop subsidizing electric vehicles with a bad carbon footprint,” emphasized French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire at the presentation of the measures in September 2023. “French taxpayers’ money should not be used to finance vehicles 70 percent of which come from China,” Le Maire stated with conviction.
To be eligible for the environmental bonus, EVs must score a minimum number of environmental points starting in 2024. These are determined by the greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain, i.e., the carbon footprint of the materials used, as well as the emissions during production and shipping of a car. Only a “score environmental” of 60 out of 100 possible points qualifies for the environmental bonus of up to 7,000 euros.
Above all, two criteria of the revised environmental bonus are expected to exclude Chinese-manufactured EVs from the subsidy. Firstly, the carbon emission factor of the energy mix in the country of origin is considered in the rating. China scores very poorly here because it generates much of its electricity from coal. Added to this are the carbon emissions generated during shipping from production to the distribution site in France.
The French energy agency ADEME is responsible for calculating the environmental points. Car manufacturers must submit all relevant data to ADEME as of October 2023. A list of the EVs that will still be eligible for subsidies will be published on 15 December 2023.
It is already known that they must not only meet the new criteria for the environmental bonus. Their price cannot exceed 47,000 euros and their weight must not exceed 2.4 tons. This means German-made models such as Volkswagen’s ID.3 or the 2024 Mini Countryman E should have a good chance.
Germany’s IG Metall trade union, which has traditionally enjoyed a strong position in the German automotive industry, believes the French government’s approach is appropriate. “The carbon footprint of production, energy mix and transport should be taken into account both in the carbon pricing of imports and in the design of subsidies and instruments,” it told Table.Media. It is no anti-China tariff, but a carbon-oriented subsidy system that promotes the development of regional and local value chains.
The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) believes the new French regulations go too far. While promoting the switch to alternative drive systems makes sense in principle, the same conditions must apply to all, said a VDA spokeswoman. “Protectionism is not the right way. Europe must stand for the value of international, free and fair trade and open markets.” But Juergen Matthes, Head of International Economic Policy, Financial and Real Estate Markets at the German Economic Institute (IW), is no longer sure about that. Upon a question from Table.Medias, he said that typically such an approach “would be branded as sheer protectionism.”
But it’s not that simple because the other big players don’t play by the rules either. “The United States promotes EVs with similar regulations. And China has also heavily subsidized the production side of EVs,” Matthes said.
The EU Commission now also sees China’s subsidies as a problem. According to its calculations, Chinese EV imports are sold on average 20 percent below the price of European cars in the EU. Their market share could increase from 8 to 15 percent in the next few years.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attributes this to unfair practices. “Their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies. This is distorting our market,” she criticized in mid-September before the EU Parliament in Strasbourg.
Consequently, the Commission initiated a formal anti-subsidy proceeding against China on 4 October 2023. The declared aim is to protect companies producing in the EU. “Wherever we find evidence that they are being hampered by market distortions and unfair competition, we will act decisively,” von der Leyen stressed.
While France has lobbied extensively for this step, Germany has been rather reluctant for fear of countermeasures. Moreover, it is currently unclear to what extent non-Chinese car manufacturers such as BMW or VW, which manufacture EVs in China for the global market, benefit from such Chinese subsidies.
In addition to the environmental bonus, a second subsidy instrument will also exclude vehicles manufactured in China in the future. Only vehicles manufactured in the EU are explicitly eligible for the newly created “social leasing” scheme. The aim of social leasing is the democratization of electromobility, something that has been much discussed in France.
It is intended to enable households with an annual income of less than 20,850 euros to lease a new EV for 100 euros a month. This is one of President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign promises from last year.
For 2024, the government anticipates approximately 20,000 social leasing contracts. In the following years, the number of subsidized lease cars is set to increase to 100,000 per year. A budget of 50 million euros has been earmarked for this. With this funding, the French government covers the initial down payment. However, this down payment must not exceed 16 percent of the vehicle price or 5,000 euros. This is why small, fuel-efficient vehicles are the primary beneficiaries of the program. The Citroën ë-C3, the Renault Twingo E-Tech and the Fiat 500e are some of the vehicles under consideration.
The subsidy regulations will be published in November. The application process will also start then. As with the environmental bonus, a list of eligible models is expected in mid-December.
It is unlikely that a German EV will qualify for social leasing after VW announced the end of the e-Up a few weeks ago. Instead, high-margin SUVs and luxury cars dominate the product range of German carmakers.
IG Metall sees this as a mistake. From their perspective, “there needs to be a quick addition to the model policy toward affordable vehicles.” IG Metall believes this will determine the future viability and market position of companies.
Sinolytics is a European research-based consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
With China’s fertility rate having fallen off a cliff, many experts have offered a variety of advice for addressing the problem. But all of the proposals lack an essential component: a critical perspective on the role of gender.
Because the focus has been on the impact of high childrearing costs on fertility, the career penalty that women incur when they have a child has largely been overlooked. China’s policymakers would benefit greatly from the work of the Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin, who won the Nobel Prize for economics this year for her research advancing “our understanding of women’s labor-market outcomes.”
What does a gender-critical economics perspective suggest about China’s falling fertility rate? For starters, the growing literature on women’s labor-market outcomes shows that bearing a child can have significant negative effects on future employment prospects and salary.
This “parenthood penalty” is usually better understood to be a “motherhood penalty,” since it falls almost exclusively on women. The data make clear that women with children work and earn less than women without children, with some economists putting the parenthood penalty at around 20 percent of income.
Taking that figure as a benchmark, economists Yaohui Zhao, Xiaobo Zhang, and I looked into the lifetime income losses associated with childbirth in China, and found that they total to around 78,000 US dollars. Previously, the YuWa Population Research Institute examined the costs of childbearing in China – from rising formula prices and housing rents to education-related expenses – and estimated that the bill from birth to age 18 comes to around 66,000 US dollars. That is 6.9 times China’s per capita GDP, a ratio much higher than what one finds in the United States, France, or Germany.
But this figure accounts only for direct costs. When we add the parenthood penalty, the average total cost of raising a child in China could be as high as 144,000 US dollars. While it may be around 84,000 US dollars in rural areas, it can be more than 300,000 US dollars in urban centers such as Beijing and Shanghai.
And these are just the quantifiable monetary costs. There are additional risks, such as those stemming from rising divorce rates and poorly regulated processes for assigning custody of children. When Jing Zhang of the Beijing Lawyers Association examined more than 700 cases involving custody rights, she found that children were forcibly separated or hidden from a parent – mostly by fathers – 13 percent of the time.
Since China’s rising divorce rate is a new phenomenon, laws and enforcement in this domain leave much to be desired. Cases of parents, often mothers with legal custody rights but deprived of access to their children, are not unusual.
As in most countries, Chinese working women also bear an unfair and disproportional burden when it comes to family care and household work. According to the World Bank, female labor-force participation in China is now 61.1 percent (much higher than global average of 50), yet women do 2.6 times more unpaid domestic and care work than men.
It is no wonder that modern Chinese women are reluctant to have children. Like the working American women whom Goldin studies, Chinese women today are very different from their mothers and grandmothers. This is a generation that grew up with the one-child policy and the expansion of college enrollment for women starting in 1999. They have had far better educational opportunities, and they have benefited from the legacy of “reform and opening-up” and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Having made educational, professional, and social gains that previous generations scarcely could have imagined, many Chinese women will no longer settle for the traditional model of marriage according to which men are the breadwinners and the bosses of the household, and women the subordinate homemakers. They refuse to accept that being a mother should be their entire identity.
Yet now that China’s fertility rate remains stubbornly low, there is renewed social pressure on women to “behave responsibly” by resuming their former roles. Parents are also urging their daughters to get married and have children, lest they become “leftover women” (those still single after age 27). But this pressure is merely adding to the burden and agitation that many aspiring working women bear.
Faced with overwhelming demands, many women are doing the opposite of what they are told and refusing to get married. This makes perfect sense. As long as they are single, they cannot be pressured to have babies and perform the overwhelming double duty of full-time professional and homemaker.
This is modern Chinese women’s silent strike. Exhausted from working both at the office and at home, women need men to step up and share more household and childcare responsibilities, and they need better policy and legal frameworks to account for gender inequities.
The solution to falling fertility rates thus cannot be only material or monetary in nature. Subsidizing childcare or kindergarten services is important, but so is doing more to ensure gender equality. China’s policies and social values should respect and promote women’s and men’s freedom of choice in work and/or at home. They need to recognize that many women long for career success, and they should encourage and celebrate men who share household and childcare responsibilities.
China benefits from its extraordinary powers to achieve policy goals. If Chinese policymakers take additional steps with more gender perspectives, they can enjoy more sustainable and healthy fertility rates, and help women truly “hold up half the sky.”
Qian Liu is Managing Director of the Economist Group in Greater China.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.
www.project-syndicate.org
After five months in space, the three taikonauts Zhu Yangzhu, Gui Haichao and Jing Haipeng have returned to Earth. The return capsule of the Shenzhou 16 spacecraft, slowed down by a large parachute, landed on Tuesday in the Gobi Desert – more precisely, at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. State television broadcast the footage live. This marks the second crew change since the space station began operations earlier this year. China continues to push ahead with its space program and, like the United States, plans to send humans to the moon again. The People’s Republic’s first manned lunar mission is planned for 2030.
