Babies and payments
Cratering birthdates in Hong Kong
Focus on children, in one way or any other, is universal around the world. Israeli and Palestinian parents, otherwise divided, share a fear for the future of their children as the conflict accelerates this afternoon in the Middle East.
Parents in America worry their children will face violence in their school cafeterias. Abortion will remain a core topic for the 2024 elections across the United States. Children illegally entering the United States continues bedeviling public policy for so many federal departments ranging from federal immigration officials in Yuma to bilingual educators in Alamosa, Colorado to preventing violence against these poor souls in New York City or Chicago hotels where they temporarily await determinations of their future. Families fleeing chaotic Venezuela and drug-infested Mexico invariably begin their dangerous and arduous journeys with their children’s futures in mind.
Climate change undermining food security in Indo-China dramatically affects the long-term prognosis for Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Malay, and Indonesian children. Filipinos hope their children not only achieve a better standard of living but simply survive the onslaught of ever-more potent cyclones regularly assaulting that nation.
Today’s Wall Street Journal reminds us that China’s incessant worry about the future—hardly my definition of a confident regime—is manifested yet again, this time in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong. ‘Hong Kong, Facing an Exodus, Offers Money for Babies’ blares the stark statistic of a 40% drop in Hong Kong’s birthrate between 2019 and 2022. The future of any nation rests on its children; witnessing a decline of 40% over such a brief period is indeed shocking.
Readers likely recall that Hong Kong’s initial ‘easy’ path following the 1997 reversion from British Crown Colony to Beijing’s SAR lasted a mere decade. The handover occurred under an agreement of a fifty year transition period where the former colony would be allowed to more-or-less self-govern within the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model Beijing touted to lure doubters in the territory and, hopefully, Taiwan.
Beijing’s greater confidence regarding its global position, shown at the 2008 as it hosted the Olympics and seemingly evaded the coincident global financial crisis, ensured less fidelity to the accord. The CCP rebuffed Hong Kong’s demands for the promised autonomy in many sectors. As Hong Kongers increasingly challenged Beijing’s selective respect for the agreement, their protests publicly embarrassed the CCP in Beijing, a regime increasingly obsessed with ‘respect’. Massive student protests in 2014, the ‘Umbrella Revolution’, rocked the city over the CCP choosing not only the rules for participation in local elections but the candidates as well. The four month protests attracted much media attention but did little to change Beijing’s restrictive position. It was one of the most public problems Xi Jinping encountered as he consolidated his power during this first term.
Five years later, similarly massive protests erupted as Beijing deemedthe SAR subject to extradiction to the mainland when Hong Kongers violated mainland laws. Neutering further its commitment to the reversion agreement only alienated Hong Kong youth and many businesses further, reinforcing those who said Beijing was utterly untrustworthy. Departures accelerated.
Hong Kong, that jewel in Britain’s economic presence in Asia, also faced a substantially different context by 2019. The island became British in 1842 as the Qing dynasty suffered through its final years. As Canton/Guangzhou and Shanghai became less desirable locations for foreign investment and trade with chaos across the society, Hong Kong, with the Royal Navy’s and Westminster’s support, substituted as a thriving, safe, welcoming entrepot.
Hong Kong suffered when the Japanese overran the British during World War II but the colony bounced back as a vibrant, if tenuous, connection between Communist China and those who escaped before 1949. Hong Kong, at the southern end of the Pearl River delta, served as the de facto opening between foreign investment and the experiments underway in Guangzhou at the northern end of that waterway as the Four Modernisations unfolded beginning in the late 1970s. Foreigners would have made it into China but few places were more pleasant to begin their journeys than the streets surrounding Wan Chai or the thousands of people pursuing open commerce in the Kowloon alleys near the glorious harbour. The Star Ferry, anachronistic because of its staff’s mid-19th century British uniforms, continued as a metaphoric link between Hong Kong’s British-centric history and an ever-growing mainland presence as the CCP economy modernised.
By 2019, Shanghai eclipsed Hong Kong as a desirable investment destination within the PRC. Those increasingly worried about CCP actions circumvented China altogether in favour of Singapore. Hong Kong’s lure for many natives, and even more foreigners, diminished into history’s experiences rather than the energy and prosperity in the future.
Beijing’s increased willingness to ignore its commitments increased disjuncture between any form of promised participatory governance and freedoms in Beijing-controlled China. The 2019 protests yet again reminded all—especially those in Taiwan—that CCP adherence to agreements was fanciful when anyone challenged the CCP’s definition of ‘norms’.
The COVID lockdowns came merely months after the protests, subjecting this densely populated Hong Kong to harsh lockdowns for months. Residents suffered through the 2003 SARS crisis where attention focused on this city as deaths spread. But SARS lasted a brief period compared with COVID and the zero-tolerance Xi Jinping pursued in unsuccessfully eradicating this newer virus. It is hard to recall that COVID lockdowns continued, on a rolling basis, until about 50 weeks ago. Hong Kong took it hard.
In sum, Hong Kong has had a pretty rough time recently. Paying its young $2,550 US to bear a child is this environment will fail as the incentives are failing on the mainland. Conditions are different than they were, incentives for future stability are much lower, the sense of security for raising children to live in a hopeful, prosperous future is dramatically lessened than it has been in two centuries. And Beijing cannot change that with money.
Northeast Asia as a whole confronts young who are not inclined to have large families. Japan’s demographic decline is perhaps the best known in the world, even if far from unique. The graying of Japan has been underway for decades, not the least because young Japanese women want careers which they fear motherhood would undermine for various reasons. South Korea’s phenomenal economic expansion beginning in the 1950s and 60s similarly drove down birthrates so it too is aging with our demographic replacement. Hong Kong has many women in the economy who simply don’t want more children.
As we have discussed both the mainland and Taiwan are one-child societies, though the latter never had a formal policy as the CCP did between the late 1970s and mid-2010s. Taiwan’s demographic shift also originated with urban, educated women entering the workforce. One of the unintended consequences of economic modernisation anywhere is population replacement levels declining. It is a trade off we see repeatedly.
Hong Kong’s population departs if they can, while those remaining wonder why one would bring a child into this uninspiring world. Beijing may want it otherwise but Actions Create Consequences. As true with so many different issues, the Party’s security obsession undermines its other aspirations. With the years marching inexorably towards the formal end of One Country, Two Systems in 2047, options diminish in the SAR along with hope for the brighter future. This is a cruel irony as Hong Kong was optimism embodied for many generations. Alas, more children are a consequence of the discontentment and loss of faith in a better future. In this case, there is no inevitability to improvement.
The late October warmth is unnatural but it ebbs tomorrow. The colours are finally vibrant in the Chesapeake. The harbour is brimming with visitors and we are hosting the belated Kunta Kinte Festival in Annapolis, delayed by weather earlier in the summer. Local author Alex Haley would be proud.
Thank you for reading this column today. I write for you to in any way facilitate civilised, measured discussion. Please don’t hesitate to send some feedback! Thanks especially to those who are paid subscribers as I appreciate your comments.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Selena Cheng, ‘Hong Kong, Facing an Exodus, Offers Money for Babies’, WSJ.com, 28 October 2023, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/china/hong-kong-facing-an-exodus-offers-money-for-babies-98c7ce07?mod=djem10point