FootnoteThe IMD World Competitiveness Center in Switzerland announced their 2017 World Competitiveness Ranking, which ranked 63 of the world’s leading countries or regions, including most of the countries covered in this book. The inclusion of these East Asian countries in the rankings, which focused on employment and trade, are evidence that East Asia’s production, trade, and consumption have solidified its important position in the world economy and that further economic growth is expected. However, these high rankings conceal severe demographic problems, with rapidly decreasing birthrates and aging societies threatening the societies of East Asia in the order in which they took off.
This book regards Northeast and Southeast Asia, where a declining birthrate and an aging population is seen in almost every region. It uses population censuses to analyze social changes, covering numerous topics, including the transformation of family structures, the birth of megaregions, ethnic groups, and laborers crossing borders. This book endeavors to do something never done before by analyzing most of these countries individually and compiling the analyses into a single book. Edited by Akira Suehiro and Keiichiro Oizuma and written by 13 authors, this book encompasses all East Asian countries except for Mongolia and Laos.
This book studies information about multiple countries through the common database of the population census, gathering the material into one volume. It also endeavors to explore how each country’s government manages its citizens by surmising the intentions of each government. I believe that this is a novel method.
The general research assumes a theoretical basis through its method. In other words, it makes inferences by having a clear concept of the issues, forming a hypothesis with a theoretical framework, and performing an analysis by using the necessary materials and data. It is common in the social sciences to seek academic value in substantiating causal relationships that exist between concepts by grasping new social phenomena. In contrast, this book uses an inductive approach, analyzing a database and explaining the obtained results. While this may lead to new discoveries, they are difficult to organize because they cover such a wide range. Moreover, since explanatory variables from a single census may provide limited analytical results, additional non-census information may be required. Since censuses contain fundamental data, authors need to understand each country’s history, culture, politics, economics, and social context as well as possess high-level analytical skills to make critical discoveries.
As for the second point, further investigation is required into the author’s opinion that “it’s not appropriate to grasp these three trends of urbanization, a declining birthrate, and an aging population in East Asia with the societal changes associated with industrialization” (p. 4 of the preface).
The author adds that this is “because the scale and speed far exceeds what would be expected.” While the beginning of this book alludes to increased urbanization, it does not investigate causal relationships between declining birthrates, aging population, transformation of family structures, spread of higher education, surging export and import of labor, decreased poverty, and increasing inequality.
The economic and sociological results clarify the impact of changes to the industrial structure in which increased urbanization, progression of the declining birthrate and aging population, transformation of family structures, spread of higher education, surge in migrant labor, decreasing poverty, and inequality occur through industrialization. First, an example of this is that modern industries (i.e., manufacturing and related industries) become a country’s key industries through urbanization and this leads to a population concentration in the cities where these industries are located.
If “it’s not appropriate to view these three trends of urbanization, a declining childbirth, and an aging population as societal changes associated with industrialization,” then “how should this be viewed?” The book’s epilogue interprets declining birthrates accompanying the trend to delay or forgo marriage in Northeast Asia with the assumption that “marriage assumes having children.” However, in Southeast Asia, a different perspective regarding a decreasing birthrate may be necessary (for instance, in the primarily Muslim country of Malaysia).
In recent years, the demographic transition theory, which sets a final equilibrium between births and deaths, has been questioned. Fertility rates in Western European countries have substantially dipped below the 2.1 level required for population replacement, and the more tragic second demographic transition has been widely accepted in society. Global changes in the industrial structure, initiated by industrialization, have lowered birthrates in several ways, such as by transforming family structures, delaying or forgoing of marriage, increasing educational requirements, and expanding work opportunities for women. However, these factors are applied differently in different geographic areas. In Eastern Europe, the rate of social progress for women and the fertility rate are lower than in Western Europe. In Scandinavian countries, which have a high degree of social progress for women, the fertility rate is generally higher than in Western Europe.
This book focuses on urbanization, declining birthrates, and aging population. It challenges the concept that these changes are associated with industrialization but does not offer a replacement theory except in the epilogue. In this regard, further collaboration between the authors responsible for each chapter and the editors is required.
Finally, in the third point, I want to make a comment as someone who does research on China. The population census in China is different compared with that in other countries and has a special purpose. As China navigates a population in units of hundreds of millions, it now sees a greater “separation between the person and registered location”. This book is correct in suggesting that the purpose of the Chinese population census is to keep track of this “separation between the person and registered location.” Since the population census is a complete database that identifies the “separation between the person and registered location,” it is an important source of information for understanding the full picture of the movements of the labor force in China. Kizaki deserves a lot of commendation as a scholar on Chinese employment and labor policies and for focusing on the difference between regions in this “separation between the person and registered location,” which has never really received attention before. However, unfortunately, the author’s conclusion that “the Hukou System is weakening its function” is somewhat imprudent.
The ratio of “separation between the person and registered location” now reaches over 50% in Beijing and Shanghai and is in the high 30% range in the provinces. This means that population movement within cities is about 20%. Moreover, the rates of “separation between the person and registered location” in the towns and rural areas of Beijing and Shanghai are considerably higher than the national average. Consequently, a gradual “upheaval phenomenon” can be observed, in which people first move from other provinces to rural villages of Beijing and Shanghai, then move from the rural areas of both cities to the towns, and then move from the towns to inside the cities. China designates Tier 1 cities for community engagement and nationwide political and economic activities. Below the Tier 1 cities, China establishes complex levels of tiers 2–5 cities, ranked by the importance of their administrative subdivisions. In general, while inhabitants of high-ranking cities can freely migrate to lower-ranked cities, population movements from lower- to higher-ranked cities are restricted. However, migration between cities of similar levels is comparatively less restricted. These migration restrictions aim to preserve the social welfare of the city’s inhabitants and to soften the impact of a fluid population on these cities. Nevertheless, the rural-to-urban population flow has not been deterred by the declining function of the Hukou system.
Social welfare in urban areas is better than in rural areas. Yet various conditions are being established accompanied by social welfare benefits. City residents who maintain their social welfare are restricted from free migration through these additional conditions. Accordingly, the systems designed to guard the rights of city residents tightly restrain them to their hometowns, and as stated above, the population movement is taking place gradually. Moreover, in Beijing and Shanghai, where the economy is well developed, urbanization is expanding to their towns and villages, which are rich in job opportunities. Since population migration from outside areas remains tightly controlled, people more often live in towns and villages than in high-cost cities.
This book is a pioneering work that should spur future international organizations to refine their respective population censuses, with the cooperation of governments and research organizations. I recognize the book’s academic and social importance and would like to express my respect for the authors’ contributions. If this reviewer has overlooked or misunderstood any part of this book, he requests the forbearance of the authors and the readers.
Notes
This paper is a revised version of the original work in Japanese, Z. Jin, “Higashiajia no Shyakai Daihendo: Jinko Sensasu ga Kataru Sekai”, Ajia Kenkyu, Vol.65, no.1(2019):112–117.