JD com : JDT Chief Economist Outlines Highlights and Challenges on China’s Census 2020

by Vivian Yang

In line with the release of China's once-a-decade census, Dr. Jianguang Shen, chief economist of JD Technology published an article on FTChinese.comon May 12, in which he outlined two bright spots and two challenges reflected in the population's structural changes.

Shen pointed out that accelerated urbanization process in the past 10 years, which has moved more than 100 million people from rural to urban areas, significantly boosted China's productivity and economic growth. Building people-centric urban construction, public services and financial, fiscal and other kinds of support will be next priorities for policymakers.

The rise in the number of people achieving higher education, showed that 'China's human capital has improved notably'. At the same time, the ratio of females to males also narrowed, alleviating the worries about gender imbalances exhibited in the last census.

Shen noted that a rapidly aging society poses a big challenge to China's economic development. The trend can be seen from the slight consumption ebb of baby and maternal products and the rise of healthcare products and services in recent years.

In face of the mounting pressure on state-run pension management, Shen suggested to accelerate the transfer of SOE profits to the social security fund and develop the third pillar of pension insurance to form a key supplement to China's pension insurance system.

The regional imbalance of population movement is another attention-worthy issue. Broadly, the data showed population declines in central and northeast regions of the country, but increases in eastern coastal and western areas. Taking a holistic approach to allocate public resources among different regions will be important for the country to achieve overall balanced economic growth.

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