Last week, Beijing’s release of China’s national birth count for 2025 left demographers stunned. The national birth total plummeted by over 17% from 2024 to 2025, the PRC disclosed. That sort of precipitous drop is almost never seen in stable modern societies, where births tend to inch up or down from one year to the next. A decline of this magnitude qualifies as a demographic shock of the sort typically associated with dire calamities like famine or plague — a sign that a disaster or