Into Asia
Hosted by journalist Chang Che and editor Ian Buruma, Into Asia explores how China, Japan, and Korea are reshaping the world. From memory politics to AI and demographic decline, they connect history and current affairs to reveal the new role Asia will play in the twenty-first century.
Into Asia
The Forces Shaping Asia's Low Birth Rates
China, Japan, and South Korea are each confronting plummeting birthrates and rapidly aging populations, each with worrying consequences for their economies, societies, and political futures.
What makes East Asia’s demographic decline different from that of the West? As women entered the workforce in Asia, how did they define and discover freedom and fulfillment between the expectations of the family and the workplace? And in China, how has the one- and two-child policies—and the parallel tide of economic reforms—reshaped desires in marriage and child-bearing among young adults?
Yun Zhou, a social demographer at the University of Michigan with a particular focus on family policy and gender in contemporary China, joins us.