Professor Carl Minzner was quoted in The Diplomat in an article examining the population nearing its peak in China and government regulation.
China released results from its 2020 census this week, reporting that its population grew to 1.41 billion last year, a narrow increase from the previous year. The total population figure exceeded expectations that the Chinese government was set to announce the first year-on-year decline in six decades, according to reporting from the Financial Times.The marginal growth suggests that the country’s population size may be nearing its peak.…For now, some restrictions remain while the government urges the country to “achieve an appropriate fertility level.” However, as the central government faces down the challenge of improving the well-being of the most populous country with an increasingly tenuous economic model, its leaders may come to favor more hands-on policies. “With Beijing’s predilection for numerical targets, it is easy to imagine this resulting in a 180-degree inversion of the anti-natalist tactics pursued during the decades of the one-child policy, with local Party cadres graded on their success in increasing — rather than reducing — birth rates in their jurisdictions,” wrote Carl Minzner, law professor at Fordham University.