(CNSNews.com) - The number of births in China as well as the number of women of reproductive age in that country will begin to drop "precipitously" in the years after 2011, a leading expert on China's controversial "one-child" policy predicted Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the number of Chinese people aged 60 and over will rise from more than 140 million today to 200 million by 2015, said Prof. Wang Feng, who teaches sociology and demography and conducts research on China at the University of California, Irvine.

A fast-aging population and associated decline in the annual supply of new labor will have far-reaching consequences in a society where elderly parents have traditionally relied on their children for support, demographers and economists have warned.

The other major demographic challenge facing China, they say, is an increasing gender imbalance in favor of males.

Both problems are attributed largely to coercive birth-limitation policies introduced by Beijing almost three decades ago, under which most urban couples are restricted to one child, while those in rural areas and members of ethnic minorities may have two or more, in some circumstances.

China says about 400 million births have been averted as a result.

Since late last month, Beijing has issued mixed signals over the future of the one-child rule, with two senior officials suggesting that the policy may be eased because of the demographic concerns.

But in a move apparently designed to end the speculation and put the matter to rest, the head of the government's National Population and Family Planning Commission this week ruled out any changes to the population-control policy for at least the next decade.

The population-control policy has proven itself to be "compatible with national conditions," Zhang Weiqing said in an interview with the official China Daily newspaper.

"So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth," he said.

In 10 years' time, Zhang said, nearly 200 million Chinese will reach childbearing age and a new birth peak is expected.

"Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now," he said. "It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development."

But Wang, the UCI professor, disputed Zhang's arguments.

"Both the fears of a large number of women entering reproductive ages and a pending baby boom have no factual basis," he said.

"They are used to confuse China's demographic reality, which is very low fertility and accelerated aging, and as excuses for not moving forward with phasing out the one-child policy."

Wang said his team's calculations show that the annual number of births in China will peak at 17.27 million in 2011, after which they will drop sharply.

Also in 2011, the number of women aged 20-29 will peak at 110 million, and then it too will go into steep decline.

Already, he said, "the number of women reaching reproductive age is far smaller in proportion of total population in comparison to the past."

On the question of the graying of Chinese society, Wang noted that today's 60-plus population of 140 million is already larger than the total population of Japan (127 million), the world's 10th most populous country, and approaching that of Bangladesh (150 million) and Russia (141 million), respectively the seventh and eighth most populous.

By 2030, he said, the number of Chinese people over 60 will have more than doubled, reaching 300 million.

Review rumors

Speculation about a review of the population-control policies rose on Feb. 28, when the vice minister of the family planning body, Zhao Baige, said the possibility of changing the policy to allow an "incremental" increase in the number of children couples had "become a big issue among decision-makers."

One day later, another official newspaper denied that the policy would be changed.

But on March 2, a spokesman for the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a 2,200-member political advisory body, appeared to confirm that a review was indeed on the cards.

"The one-child policy was the only choice we had given the conditions when we initiated the policy," Wu Jianmin told a press conference ahead of the CPPCC's annual session. "As things develop, there might be some changes to the policy, and relevant departments are considering this."

It's unusual for apparent policy differences to air in official media, particularly over a human rights issue that has been sensitive in China's relations with the West. The U.S. has since 2002 withheld millions of dollars in funding each year to the U.N. Population Fund, because of its association with China's coercive population control programs.

Some pro-life advocates were skeptical from the outset, suspecting that the remarks suggesting a change were designed to help ease pressure China faces over human rights ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Wang said he was not surprised at the apparent backtracking, because a phasing-out of the one-child policy "involves political risks."

Coercion continues

In its latest annual report on international human rights, released on Tuesday, the State Department outlined the ways Chinese officials enforced the birth-limitation program during 2007.

They included fines for violators of up to 10 times their annual disposable income; detention of family members or confiscation and destruction of property of families who refused to pay the fines; threat of job loss or demotion; and other psychological and economic pressures.

"The penalties sometimes left women with little practical choice but to undergo abortion or sterilization," the report said.

It also cited "sporadic reports of violations of citizens' rights" by officials who face rewards for meeting population-control quotas or penalties for failing to do so.

In one case, dozens of expectant mothers - some with pregnancies as advanced as nine months - were forced to undergo abortions in Guangxi province in April and May.

The State Department report noted the ongoing problem of China's gender ratio being heavily weighted towards boys.

Despite regulations forbidding abortions based on the sex of the child, parents preferring a boy for traditional or economic reasons continue to abort unwanted baby girls after having an ultrasound scan to determine gender.

For every 100 girls born in China, 119 boys are born, according to government national estimates. Elsewhere in the world the norm is between 103 and 107 boys for every 100 girls.

"There is a whole nation of women who are not living in China today because they were aborted before they were born," said Reggie Littlejohn, an American attorney who advisers an international human rights group on China policy.

Littlejohn said the consequences of what she labeled "gendercide" would include millions of men being unable to marry, and human trafficking to find wives.

See earlier story:
Pro-Lifers Wary of Reports of a Shift in China's 'One Child' Policy (Mar. 3 2008)

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