China Zhang Zhang, 37, an engineer in Beijing, has forced his parents to give up their desire to have a grandson after 10 years of unsuccessful persuasion.

"I value my spiritual life and my hobbies. Children will make me consume a lot of energy and I cannot accept it," Zhang said. However, Eno Zhang is not the only one who has chosen this way of life.

The rising cost of education, housing and health care has made more and more Chinese people reluctant to marry and lazy to have children. Many women who graduate from college often do not want to have children to avoid affecting the career. While many women born during the one-child policy period and now of reproductive age do not want to think about looking after children.

"We are all children and quite selfish. How can I raise children when I am an infant? How can I take care and wake up every night to feed my children?" Dong Chang, a 28-year-old administrative worker at a dental clinic in Beijing, said. Dong shared young people as she likes to spend spontaneously for herself but hard to give up what they love to have children.

Dong currently lives with his boyfriend, but the two have no intention of getting married in the near future because they do not want their parents to force them to give birth.

Meanwhile, Melody Lin, a 26-year-old employee at a non-profit organization, said she could not find any reason to give birth. She once thought that going along the common path of many people was to get married and have children, but eventually decided to give up that thought after reading many arguments that not all women needed children.

"My parents think I'm young and will change my mind when I get older. But I don't think so," Lin said.

According to the China Bureau of Statistics, in 2019, the country had only 14.6 million newborns, a decrease of 4% compared to 2018 and the lowest level since 1961. The birth rate in China in 1961 was 11.8 million children, due to famine, caused millions of deaths.

2019 is the third consecutive year the country has seen declining birth rates, after rising slightly in 2016 when the Chinese government ended its one-child policy. Officials hope this could improve fertility, but the results are not as expected.

Experts say there are a few trends leading to a decline in fertility, including educated women who now do not consider marriage a necessary solution to ensure financial security. Besides, many Chinese couples cannot afford to have children when the cost of living increases and they have to spend time and energy working. The attitude of many people with marriage has changed.

"It's the society of two groups of people: one doesn't want to get married and the other doesn't have the conditions to have children. At a deeper level, you'll have to think about how China will become a society. , not only demographically but also sociologically, "said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, USA.

While many countries are also suffering from low birth rates and aging of the population, these problems are even more serious in China. Most seniors here depend on their grandchildren to pay for medical care, retirement and other expenses. Many young couples take on the responsibilities of caring for their parents and grandparents without support from their brothers.

If the birth rate continues to decline while life expectancy increases, China will not have enough young workers to support the economy and care for the constantly increasing number of elderly people. This will put pressure on pension systems, hospitals and companies. A low birth rate means the state's pension fund, which depends on contributions from the labor force, is at risk of "running out of money" by 2035.

Despite the growing population crisis, the Beijing government maintains strict rules such as punishing families for violating the number restriction and prohibiting single women from accessing assistive technology. reproduction.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences last year said its population would decline by 2027, while many others believed it would happen sooner. Cai Yong, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina in the United States, says fertility will continue to decline for at least the next decade.

"There are many similarities between the population crisis and global warming. They are all getting worse and we need a long-term strategy to deal with it," Professor Cai said.