(NBC News) BEIJING — China is shrinking as more couples are making a conscious choice not to have babies — at least not human ones.
Like their counterparts in the United States and elsewhere, young people in China are increasingly choosing a different path to parenting — doting on dogs, cats and other cherished creatures instead of children.
The reason is partly economic, as they struggle with slowing growth, an intensely competitive society and the rising cost of living.
But it also reflects changing views of marriage and family as China continues to modernise.
“Many people don’t want to get married now,” said Guo Xinyi, 28, who has a poodle and two cats. “They just feel pets can bring happiness, while raising a child is exhausting,” she told NBC News last week at a pet grooming shop in Beijing.
It’s a worrisome trend for Chinese officials, who are trying to increase the birth rate as the country faces a demographic crisis that was underscored by last week’s release of government data showing the population had fallen for the fourth year in a row.
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the end of China’s strict one-child policy, which was implemented in 1979 by officials who were concerned the country’s population might grow too large. The policy was further relaxed in 2021 to allow couples to have up to three children amid worries that the long-suppressed birth rate was not keeping up with China’s fast-aging population.
Far from unleashing a frenzy of procreation, the loosening of restrictions has done little to encourage births, with China recording half as many as a decade ago.
China is now the world’s second most populous nation after being overtaken by India in 2023. And its population dropped by 3.39 million last year to 1.405 billion, the National Bureau of Statistics said last Monday. Births were down 17% to a record-low 7.92 million, compared with 16.55 million in 2015.
The rate of marriage, which in China is generally considered a prerequisite for having children, is also falling precipitously. In 2024 the number of marriages plunged by a fifth in the biggest drop on record, from 7.68 million to 6.1 million.
Authorities are trying to promote marriage and childbearing through pronatalist policies.
The central government has expanded tax breaks and last year introduced a nationwide childcare subsidy, providing families 3,600 yuan (about $500) per year for each child under the age of 3.
Local and provincial governments are also offering their own incentives, such as longer maternity leave.
Officials have also tried the opposite approach, imposing a 13% sales tax on condoms, birth control pills and other contraceptives starting Jan. 1 that is considered more symbolic than effective.
But they face stubborn resistance from young people who see childbearing as an expensive investment and a risk to them as well as their potential offspring.
People of child-bearing age, especially women, worry about the impact children could have on their careers, said Yuying Tong, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-director of its Centre for Chinese Family Studies.
Young people in particular face a persistently high unemployment rate, while those further along in their careers worry about age discrimination in hiring, in what anxious job seekers call “the curse of 35.”
They also worry about “what their children will face in the future” when it comes to competition at school and in the job market, Tong said.
With pets, she said, “they don’t need to worry about their education, they just need to provide the very basic needs. There’s no competition for pets.”
The number of pets has exploded in China, and they are more likely these days to be treated as beloved family members, a concept that used to be seen as distinctly Western.
According to Goldman Sachs, the number of pets in China already exceeds the number of children 4 and under. By 2030, it said, the country will have almost twice as many pets as toddlers: more than 70 million compared with about 40 million.
That is a reversal from 2017, when China had about 90 million children age 4 and under versus 40 million pets.
Angela He, who owns a martial arts gym in Beijing, said people in China these days have more freedom to “decide their own life.”
“It’s not decided by parents, you know, like before,” said He, 50. “It’s not like a traditional China anymore.”
She said that, unlike with children, she felt she had enough time to care for her bulldog, Meiqiu, cooking her food from scratch and buying matching outfits for the two of them to wear “like real parents and kids, you know, like one family.”
Gan Yixuan, who owns a pet grooming shop in Beijing, said many of her customers are child-free.
“There are couples raising a dog instead, really treating it like their child,” she said.
That doesn’t mean they don’t want children, Gan said, just that they are “being responsible.”
“I’ve asked them, and they do want children, but they are facing a lot of pressure in this society,” said Gan, 29. “They also don’t have enough time for kids.”
“They feel that if they can’t provide the best life for a child, then maybe it’s better for them to raise a dog instead,” she said.
Gan said her customers were willing to spend generously on their pets, and to acquire new ones.
“In this industry we talk about ‘second pets,’ just like the ‘second babies,’” she said. “At first a family might have one pet, then it becomes two or even three.”
Guo said raising her three pets was “like being a mom without the pain.”
Though it’s not always easy, “it’s relatively less financially stressful,” she said.
Having pets didn’t conflict with having a family, said Guo, adding that she was open to getting married and having children in the future.
“My family wouldn’t let me avoid marriage anyway,” she said.
