Alice Han

On a personal level, my grandfather's generation, his father had three wives.

And this is just to give people a sense of China in the early 1900s and late 1800s.

He had three wives.

My grandfather was the first son and the 12th child of the third wife.

And then his generation had three kids.

And my father then had two kids in Australia.

But our generation, so my generation of cousins in China, none of us have kids yet.

And so it's a great consternation to my grandfather who's 95 in Shanghai and hope he's listening to this.

Because every time I see him, he says, Wyatt, don't you have kids yet?

But that's just to give people a sense of where China has evolved over time.

You know, it used to be a society that valued many kids, right?

You know, you have an expression in Chinese, which is the more children, especially male children you have, the more prosperity you have.

That radically shifted in 1971, the year my aunt was born, when they introduced the one-child policy.

And I ran the numbers, James, it's startling.

In 1963, when my mother was born,

7.51 births per woman.

That's the fertility rate.

It is in 2023, one birth per woman, as you mentioned, James.

In the U.S., the peak was 1959, 3.75 births per woman.

Today, in 2023, 1.62 births per woman.