China’s Ministry of Public Security disclosed on February 8, that around 10 million newborns were entered into Hukou, the Chinese household-registration system, in 2020. This represents a 15% decline from the 11.8 million babies registered in 2019. The continued drop in new births is a ticking time bomb for Beijing. Linked with this is the drop in China's marriage rate, which plunged to 6.6 per 1,000 people in 2019, the lowest level in 14 years. Fewer births means less labour force supply, which in turn adds to the pressure on a pension system that relies on contributions from the working population. China's National Statistics Bureau has estimated that China had 254 million elderly residents aged 60 or above in 2019, or 18% of the whole population of 1.4 billion. China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs expects that number to rise to 300 million by 2025, prompting some researchers to suggest that China’s state pension scheme could run out of funding by 2035 due to the shrinking workforce. That would be a huge issue for the Party, whose top priority is to maintain social stability. The "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-term Goals for 2035", state that it is necessary to formulate a long-term population development strategy, optimize the birth policy, enhance the inclusiveness of the birth policy, and improve prenatal and postnatal care. 

(Comment: The number of newborns in China has been on a steady decline since 2016 when Beijing officially ended the one-child policy that started in 1979. Despite a short surge in the number of births in 2016 (17.9 million), the figure has since decreased every year. Forecasts are that 2020 would be the year with the lowest number of births in China in 20 years.)