The global fall in fertility rates has arrived faster and spread further than anticipated. Two-thirds of people now live in countries that have slipped below the replacement rate – 2.1 births per woman – required for a stable population. Last month, India revealed that its fertility rate had fallen to just 1.9. The world’s two most populous nations, which pursued cruel and coercive policies to cut births, both face shrinking populations. China’s fertility rate is now around 1, and births last year fell below 8 million – just over half…
Tag: Society
China to ban storing remains of dead in ‘bone ash apartments’
China is introducing a law to stop people storing the ashes of their dead relatives in empty high-rise flats rather than paying steep costs for increasingly scarce cemetery plots. China’s new funeral management legislation will prohibit the use of “residential housing specifically for the purpose of storing cremated remains” and the burial of corpses or construction of tombs in “areas other than public cemeteries”. The law will come into force on Tuesday ahead of Sunday’s Qingming grave-sweeping festival – a traditional Chinese celebration in which people clean their ancestors’ tombs…
Gen Z flocks to Chinese medicine as trust in US health system plummets: ‘It’s so personalized to being human’
Did you drink ice water today? If you did, that was “not very Chinese of you”, according to Sherry Zhu, a 23-year-old Chinese American creator based in New Jersey. If you were really serious about “becoming Chinese”, you would be sipping hot water every day, she warned in a TikTok video with millions of views. “I really do feel like, digestion-wise, a lot better when I’m drinking hot water,” she later explained to GQ. Zhu’s guidance is taken from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), a health system that dates back 5,000…
Menstrual blood test could offer alternative to cervical screening for cancer
A pioneering test of period blood for signs of cervical cancer could be a convenient, non-invasive and accurate way of screening for the disease, researchers have said. A regular sanitary pad topped with a blood sample strip can pick up human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most cases of cervical cancer, and could be used by women at home, the results of a study indicate. Currently, most women undergo cervical screening under the care of a clinician, who collects a sample via a brush inserted into the vagina. But millions of…
The Guardian view on food security: Britain can no longer trust markets alone | Editorial
Food policy across much of the world is changing. But not in Britain. That may be a costly mistake as the prices of essentials rise because of the climate emergency, geopolitical tensions and the fragility of just-in-time supply chains. Many capitals are now reviving their strategic food reserves. European nations such as Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany are rebuilding stocks dismantled after the cold war. Climate shocks have led to Egypt and Bangladesh boosting similar programmes. Countries such as Brazil and Indonesia – sensitive to the food needs of their…
Afraid of dying alone? How a Chinese app exposed single people’s deepest, darkest fears
A few days before Christmas, after a short battle with illness, a woman in Shanghai called Jiang Ting died. For years, the 46-year-old had lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hongkou, a residential neighbourhood that sits along the Huangpu River. Neighbours described her as quiet. “She rarely chats with people. We only see her when she goes to and from work, and occasionally when she comes out to pick up takeout,” said a local resident interviewed by a Chinese reporter. Her parents long deceased, Jiang had no partner or children…
The best of the long read in 2025
Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist? At 18, Mustafa was told his only way out of prison was to join the regime forces. After 14 years, his past as one of Assad’s fighters could get him killed When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not…
Only people power can save us from populism | Letters
Democratic safeguards won’t work unless they’re backed by the will of the people, argues Peter Loschi, while Roger Heppleston calls for wholesale reform of the British political system. Plus letters from Rob Hunter, Peter Buckman and Dr Piers Brendon Timothy Garton Ash has produced an excellent list of safeguards against extremism (My guide to populist-proofing your democracy – before it’s too late, 25 November). Unfortunately, they don’t work in the long term. The finest minds of the Enlightenment devised the checks and balances of the US constitution, and an authoritarian…
‘DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines’: my mother’s worrying reliance on AI for health advice
Every few months, my mother, a 57-year-old kidney transplant patient who lives in a small city in eastern China, embarks on a two-day journey to see her doctor. She fills her backpack with a change of clothes, a stack of medical reports and a few boiled eggs to snack on. Then, she takes a 90-minute ride on a high-speed train and checks into a hotel in the eastern metropolis of Hangzhou. At 7am the next day, she lines up with hundreds of others to get her blood taken in a…
Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell seeks redemption in Edward Berger’s high-stakes gambling yarn
The vast emptiness of luxury hotels is part of the mystery and spectacle of Edward Berger’s intriguing if static and overwrought psychological drama-thriller; it is about a desperate chancer and gambling addict, faced with the metaphysical crisis of renewing or annulling his existence by staking everything on a single bet. Screenwriter Rowan Joffe adapts the 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne, whose title is ironic. He would not have these problems if he really was a small player. He is a big player and a big loser, although his smallness comes…