China's harsh lockdowns could exacerbate population crisis

'We are the last generation': China's harsh lockdowns could exacerbate population crisis
Analysis by Nectar Gan, CNN
Updated 0829 GMT (1629 HKT) May 16, 2022
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Hong Kong (CNN)For generations of Chinese parents, the success of their children has long been one of their most important goals in life -- and they are known to be willing to make great sacrifices for it.

And so when a Shanghai family refused to be taken from their home into government quarantine during the city's sixth week of lockdown, a police officer warned them with what he thought would be a powerful threat to bring them to heel -- their children's future.
"If you don't obey the orders from the city government, you will be punished, and the punishment will affect three generations in your family," the hazmat-suited police officer said, pointing his finger at the camera in a video posted on Chinese social media.
"We are the last generation, thank you," a young man, who is not seen in the video, replied adamantly, in an apparent suggestion he is not planning to have any kids.
The video ended there, with no indication of whether the family was eventually taken away. But it spread like wildfire on China's internet, resonating with many young Chinese who are fed up with the increasing pressure on them to have children -- from a society and government that many say has provided them with little of the material and emotional security they need to raise a child.
"I laughed at first but in the end I felt a sense of great sadness. He is resisting by giving up his reproductive rights," said a user on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform.​
Carrying on the family line has long been a filial duty in traditional Chinese culture. But in today's China, not having children -- or delaying it -- has become a form of soft resistance and silent protest against what many see as the disappointing reality they live in, with deep-rooted structural problems stemming from a system that they have little power to change.
"It is a tragic expression of despair of the deepest kind," Zhang Xuezhong, a human rights lawyer and former law professor in Shanghai, wrote on Twitter about the video.
"We've been robbed of a future that is worth looking forward to. It is arguably the strongest denunciation a young man can make of the era he lives in."